What can be more difficult task than to love one’s enemy? An enemy is one who is always thinking ill of you. He wishes to destroy you and make your life full of difficulties. An enemy is one, who feels happy in your pain and unhappy when you are happy. It is for this reason that nature has given enough intelligence even to the animals to identify their enemies and protects themselves from their enemy. Conventional wisdom suggest that one must be beware of his enemies and defeat his enemies to lead a happy life.

We are, therefore, surprised to hear Jesus saying that you must love not only your neighbours but also your enemy. Most people think that loving the enemy is impossible at least for the ordinary people. They feel that such a high ideal may only be suitable for the saints or prophets.

Let us first try to understand who really your enemies are.

Identifying the Enemy

We find many synonyms of the word “Enemy” like opponent, adversary, foe or rival. Thus enemy is someone who opposes you or competes with you as a rival or he challenges you in a real life as adversary. He is one whose success depends on your failures and he fails when you succeed.

Let us explain this with this with an example. In Cricket, the most popular sport in India, most Indians do not like the teams of the nations which are considered to be inimical to India. The biggest enemy team is considered to be Pakistan and people rejoice when India defeats Pakistan. The other notable teams are Australia, Sri Lanka etc. However, in India Premier League (IPL), the distinction of the country is removed as cricketers from different countries play in a team and and the teams are formed on the basis of local identity like Delhi, Mumbai. Here the people forget the difference of the race and the country and happily cheer the Australian or Pakistani players if they happen to be playing for their local team.

Thus the differentiation of friends and enemies are relative. The teams act like adversaries since they have to compete with each other for the medal or position. Imagine that a top body of sport decides to make Cricket itself banned. It is certain that the sports lovers and sportsmen of all countries shall come together with each other to fight such move of the world body.

Thus we are all enemy of each other in some ways as we all are competing with each other for something.  We do not like our bosses as they try to put force on us to get the work done so as to improve their performance without giving us due credit. We often perceive our colleagues as enemy as they try to outsmart us. We even find many of our juniors as enemies as they try to challenge our position and take the slot which are occupied by us. Yet for an outside organization, we are all friends as we are all working together for the benefit of our organization.

At a higher level, all organizations consider their competitors as enemies as they are all trying to increase their market share by reducing the share of their adversaries. Yet they acts as friends when they have to negotiate with the government to get concessions or project a positive image of the industry. You can notice how the Car Manufactures or Alcohol Manufactures speak in one voice while negotiating with Government.

If we go at the micro-level, we find that within our own family, we are adversaries of each other. We have to often fight against our spouse, children or parents as we all wish to increase our power and space within the family. Yet for an outsider, we are one and present a picture of unity and love.

At the minutest level, we are fighting within ourselves. We wish to reduce our weight by avoiding the foods that are loved by our body but often fail to control the desire of the body. We all fight consistently against our passions and lusts which often lead us to serious trouble. Yet, the whole body is united when it has to fight against an external enemy.

It is thus extremely difficult to find a “all weather enemy” in the real world as the same man who fights with us at one time helps us at other times. The same person who gives us pain also gives us pleasure.

Loving Your Enemy

When you see the world in the proper perspective, you do not find enemies but you discover a number of adversaries. In fact, you may find everyone else as an adversary. Hence some people develop fear for the world as they find that everyone as his enemy. In a world full of enemy, how can they experience any emotion except hatred? They are depressed and suffer insurmountable pain.

Little do we realize that adversaries are created only to prove ourselves and to make ourselves stronger and better. If there are no adversaries, can we play a game of tennis, football or boxing? It is only when we are put against an adversary; we can display our strength and measure our potential. Even when we lose a game in tennis, we are still not a loser as playing tennis itself has increased our strength. It has also created a desire in us for improvement as we do not wish to lose again and again. We, therefore, strive to play better by developing more stamina, learning more techniques and eating better food. The result is that in the end, we become victorious.

Should you hate a person, who has made you so much better and stronger and improved your health?

It is easy to see the positive role of the adversaries in real life. Even within your family, it is only when you fight for your space, you make the other people see the need for your growth. Since they love you, they would be happy to lose their space and give you more space and freedom. This happens in every family as the child grows and starts exerting himself. Parents are only too happy to give more power and freedom to the child as they wish him to become stringer. If they act as an adversary and tough, it is only because they wish to see their child grow strong enough to face the world of his own.

It is quite common that our best friends are those who are also our adversaries. In school days, the most brilliant students are often friends and not enemies even though they all fight for the top slot. A brilliant student would never like to make friendship with a weak student as he simply does not like him. You can like a person only if he has something common with you.

If you observe, you can easily find that the most successful people in the world, always respected their adversaries as their adversaries had given them the chance to prove their mettle. The people who considered their adversaries as their enemy (Like Hitler, Stalin) always filled themselves with hatred and destroyed the world.

Who can Love his Enemies

The key to loving your enemy is to develop a holistic vision of the world. It is necessary to understand that every human being is the offspring of the same Father and that they are the members of the same family. If some people do not like us, we must look into the reason for their hatred. It is possible that we are hated because we have acquired too much of the bounties of the world and left little for our brothers and sisters. We have also made ourselves so distant from them that we are unable to listen to their voices and understand their feelings. We have also designed the rules of the game in such a way that they can never win against us and we can continue to have economic and social superiority generation after generation. They have to therefore fight with us to get what is due to them not by the rule of this world (which are invariably designed to favour the rich and the powerful) but by the rules of Almighty. If they win, they can also inherit the bounties of the world. We too have to fight to save these bounties and prove to the world that we deserve these bounties. Let the best man win.