With the publication of the now famous poem Fire and Ice, written by Robert Frost, many people have contemplated whether or not the world will end in fire or ice. Scientists have debated this, as do students in their classrooms. Stephenie Meyer used the poem in her Twilight series, as well as George R.R. Martin. However, while it certainly has an apocalyptic tone about it, it wasn’t Frost’s intent to showcase the literal demise of humankind, no matter how amusing it would’ve been. If anything, it was to showcase the darkest traits in people and to present us with two choices; to either be consumed by our desires or our hatred.

And it makes sense. After all, love and hate are two sides of the same coin, love even more so. While infatuation is an emotion people feel every day, we can be consumed by lust or obsession. We can want another person so much that it ends up taking control of our entire lives until there’s absolutely nothing left. Take Erik in The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. He loved Christine, so much so that he ended up kidnapping her and trying to force her to marry him. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, Claude Frollo becomes obsessed with the beautiful Esmerelda and attempts to make her his by any means necessary. In fact, some of his acts of love include almost killing Phoebus and punishing Quasimodo in public. Even the characters in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet suffer from this, with the titular protagonists dying in less than a week.

But where there are crimes of passion, there are also tragedies that stem from an all-consuming hatred. Though disliking someone may be a part of the annoyance of everyday life, like lust it can take over just as easily. For example, the Holocaust was one of humanity’s most devastating tragedies, with an estimated 17 million deaths, 6 million of which were European Jews. One of the major reasons why the Holocaust managed to flourish during this time was because hatred went unchecked. One man’s hatred spread across an entire population and led to the dehumanization and destruction of a group of people. School shootings, terrorist attacks, bullying; it stems from a hatred that we can’t control.

Despite the circumstances surrounding the world’s end, what we tend to ignore is that human emotions and actions have something to do with it. Many passions sometimes shine so brightly that these scorch everything that makes up who we are, hiding away our common sense in the process. What’s more, acts of hatred can bring about a devastating reality, one that forces them to flee. Frost’s poem shows us that the world is merely a tool that human emotion uses to express itself.

And since we know how uncontrollable these emotions can be, we have counselors for it. Counselors and therapists and all sorts of people to help us sort out the drama. Psychiatrists too, but given their shady historical record, I’m not too sure.