TWO four-letter words.
Each having a pair of vowels and two consonants.
But perhaps of all words in the English language they could not be more polarised.
I am writing, of course, of the words 'love' and 'hate'.
And right now, in our world, whether it's right here on the streets of the United Kingdom, in nightclubs in the United States of America or in the battle-scarred Middle East, those two small words are waging a war.
And it's affecting every single one of us.
The killing of MP Jo Cox has shocked the nation, a nadir I certainly didn't believe was possible to reach in our country.
Hate seems to be everywhere, and it's chilling me to the bone.
I truly cannot understand what is going on with the human race.
It seems you cannot go barely a couple of days before some horrendous hate-crime is committed somewhere in our world.
The brutal murder of dozens of people in a gay nightclub in downtown Orlando only last weekend was just one of an appalling series of attacks that has left the victims' families to mourn and countless numbers of decent people in the USA and beyond its shores to question yet again the absolutely insane gun 'laws' in that magnificent nation.
Right now, hate seems to have the upper hand.
But for the sake of the human race, it cannot and must not be allowed to win.
There's a wonderful quote in Charles Dickens's timeless tale A Christmas Carol that comes to mind when I think about how bad things are in the human race and how they might be improved for the good of all.
Early in the story, the heartless skinflint Scrooge is visited by his cheery nephew Fred on Christmas Eve afternoon.
Fred wants his uncle to join them the following day to celebrate Christmas, but the money-obsessed miser is having none of it.
Referencing to the season of the year, Fred remarks: "I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round - apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that - as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."
It's a brilliant summing up of the human race.
We are indeed all fellow-passengers to the grave, and it's while we're here for this oh so short space of time that I really believe we all have to play our part in being decent, helping others as best we can, and not closing our hearts and minds to them.
The European Union referendum vote has shone a very bright spotlight on what really comes down to selfishness on one side and benevolence on the other.
The Brexit side have certainly shown their absolute selfishness with their Little Englander rhetoric that simply sticks in the craw.
It's a love-in, or in this instance, a hate-in, of the right-wing - and it's been appalling to watch.
You only have to see the people leading their campaign and it tells you everything.
It's meanness and nastiness personified with an underlying agenda of hate that boils down to their masterplan to haul up the proverbial drawbridge should they win and sod the rest of the continent that we have been a geographical part of for millions of years and economically connected to for more than four decades.
There just seems to be no end to their message of hate.
But it cannot be allowed to be triumphant.
Just a couple of thousand years ago, a truly remarkable man told us to ''love your neighbour as yourself".
He preached love, not hate, and His powerful words still carry resonance today.
Reading the tributes to MP Jo Cox has been absolutely heartbreaking, but one really stood out from the rest.
It came from her grieving husband, Brendan, who wrote: "Today is the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. More difficult, more painful, less joyful, less full of love. I and Jo's friends and family are going to work every moment of our lives to love and nurture our kids and to fight against the hate that killed Jo Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it every day of her life with an energy, and a zest for life that would exhaust most people. She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now, one that our precious children are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate doesn't have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous."
And he is absolutely right.
I dread to think how the rest of this already awful year is going to pan out with the thought of Donald Trump winning the Presidency in November, something to truly terrify all right-thinking people in the four corners of this small planet we all share.
For now, I just hope and pray that we'll start to see more love around the world and not be so fearful of people who perhaps are "not like us" - whatever that means.
Indeed, as Dickens so eloquently put it, we really are all fellow-passengers to the grave and the human race needs to wise up and take that simple but true message on board.
I firmly believe that in the end, love will win the battle with hate.
Right now, though, we all just need to help it along.
