Love Your Enemies?

Father of Nation, India, Mahatma Gandhi said, Love your enemies. I keep thinking about this loving the enemies very often.

I am trying to figure out, how many of us can actually do this. In the 1st place, if we could love a person, we would not made him/her as our enemies. Once we start treating a person as enemy, then mentally it is not possible to love that person irrespective of what he/she does. There are exceptions when we start respecting & loving an enemy, but that's truly an exception.

Trying to further analyze what makes a person as enemy, I think it is difficult to say that it is these are the top 'N'points that make me hate that person. But it is very sure that we will not hate any person in 1 incidence. It is over a period of time & over various incidences that we start joining the links slowly & form an opinion about a person, as a result of which we will start liking or disliking a person, over a period of time which will turn to loving or hating a person.

Actually, a person starts hating another person whenever his/her self esteem is beaten up side down. A hurt to Self esteem can be forgotten & forgiven once, twice & thrice, but not more often that that. A man can forego everything but, his self esteem & ego. Foregoing self esteem & ego is impossible for anyone & for everyone. When ever a person gets his self esteem and ego hurt by another person over & over again, it is only then we start hating other person. In other words, we will have have enemies added to our list.

I am not saying no one should have enemies, I am also not saying we should have enemies. I am not saying Mahatma Gandhi was totally right, I am also not saying we should love enemies. Best we could do to avoid having enemies is to be very cautious in interacting with a person who starts hurting our self esteem. Instead of getting into hating mode & making new enemies, best that suits is to avoid them.

We should follow the theory, keep your friends close, but keep your enemies even closer as you need to know what your enemy is planning for you, so that you can be ready with the counter move :)