Make Yourself Some Enemies
That guy who hates you might have his uses.
‘Sweet are the uses of adversity,’ says Duke Senior in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, ‘which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.’ Never mind that the toad does not have a healing stone stuck in his head (though he does have ‘about the most beautiful eye of any living creature,’ according to Orwell). Senior’s point here is that because he has been duped and exiled by Frederick, his hungry and cunning younger brother, he can now reflect on his life in the calm of the wilderness. He is doing more than simply choosing to look on the bright side, though he is doing that: he is saying, rather, that hardship always brings some good as well as bad. Unquestionably there was something of use to draw out of even his rotten luck: a bit of peace and quiet.
Sweet are the uses of adversity, then; but sweet also are the uses of adversaries — in other words, enemies. I acknowledge that it perhaps seems a bit quaint to speak of enemies: the word calls to mind honour cultures and the political machinations of medieval courtiers or neckless thugs swinging battle-axes into one another’s faces in some godforsaken forest during the bawling infancy of our species. But I suggest, reader, that we all have enemies in a sense, if we take the word to mean people who, for one reason or another, are actively opposed to us. The literally meaning of enemy, from the Latin inimicus is ‘not-friend’.
And if we really don’t have enemies, then perhaps we should:
‘You have no enemies, you say?
Alas! My friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.’
It perhaps seems a bit quaint to speak of enemies.
The thrust of that little snippet, which is from a poem (Maggie Thatcher’s favourite poem, incidentally) by the Chartist Thomas Mackay, is that if we stand for anything at all we will inevitably acquire an enemy or two. And that if there is a bit dubious. After all, how can we not stand for anything and have any integrity to keep? Even saying or doing honestly what we feel to be true or right when asked is to stand for something, if nothing else than a commitment to seeing things as they are. There is a reason Dante sticks the people who do not take sides – the opportunists – in hell, where they run desperate and naked through the fog after ever passing banner. The people-pleaser, too, by necessity lacks integrity because he is trying to manipulate others into liking him, so making himself feel good by saying what he does not believe. This is a theme that emerges in Emma Reed-Turrell’s lovely little book, Please Yourself: people-pleasing looks like kindness, but it is in fact an attempt to control others.
Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have said that enemies are useful because they throw light on our faults. This seems to me to be true. Enemies give us feedback. Of course, we can discard that feedback; but no one is worthy of the name ‘enemy’ if her attacks are baseless: baseless attacks don’t sting in quite the same way. There is also something in psychology called social comparison theory, which suggests that we assess ourselves based on how we stack up next to others. Our enemies are like mirrors, permitting us to see parts of ourselves that we might not particularly like to see, but we might not notice otherwise. If we choose to act on this information, we can improve. So your enemy, reader — that colleague or acquaintance (or family member?) who really loathes you — can help you get better.
In a more general way, enemies can drive us to get better by giving us a goal. The sprinter might aim to beat her previous best time on the track, but she will likely do even better if she aims to beat the competition. Naturally, it helps if we really like to win (or hate to lose). Though some people take this to a a slightly fanatical degree. There is that amusing scene in the Last Dance in which Michael Jordan recalls a rival player saying something rude to him at the end of a game. During the rematch, Michael Jordan flattened him. It later transpired that whoever this player was (I forget his name) hadn’t said anything to Michael. Michael had made it up to himself and others to motivate himself to play better.
So your enemy, reader — that colleague or acquaintance who really loathes you — can help you get better.
The use of enemies goes beyond motivation, beyond highlighting our strengths and weaknesses. Enemies help us find out who we are. They sharpen our identity. Consider: you are sat at the dinner table with friends, and someone you have not met before goes on a gloomy and drawn-out speech about how terrible things are in the world. You feel mildly vexed about this. You feel, then and there, that this person is not your friend. You are not sure you like him all that much. And it strikes you as you are walking home that you disagree profoundly with what this person has been saying. Things could be better, you think, but they could be worse; and anyway, there is no point getting all down about it. What use are you then? If the party is ending, why not enjoy it while you can? In that moment, you understand just a little bit better what you think, and so who you are. Upstream from our little spasms of enmity are a set of values that we hold. We see politicians do something like this in reverse. They use enemies as a kind of reflective surface — something concrete by reference to which they get across an idea, or a system of ideas, in a down-to-earth, easily comprehensible way. If Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn has a pop at the billionaire or the ‘fat cat’, he is conveying a value he holds: that he is against wealth, or at least the possession of oodles of it by a small minority.
There is the perhaps rather obvious point that having enemies toughens us up. Organisms (to risk sounding blandly scientific) only grow when under stress. Clearly too much stress destroys the organism; but give it just enough stress et voilà! Our organism gets stronger. If we avoid conflict, we will not get any better at dealing with it. If we deny the reality of emnity or enemies, then we will not come to terms with the fact that some people just do not vibe with us. If we avoid emotional harm, we will not get more resilient. And this is the really pernicious thing about wanting to feel safe all the time (which is now strangely common). We do not get any better at dealing with uneasy feelings if we don’t have them. Yes, yes, there are exceptional cases; but for ordinary folks, avoidance is a bad life strategy.
None of what I have written, by the way, is to dignify or defend or — God forbid — encourage rudeness or pointless conflict or a lack of basic civility (though all do have their place from time to time). Nor is it to say that we should wilfully spend time with people who are a total drag. (‘Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go,’ said Oscar Wilde.) But it is to say that since we cannot please everyone, we shouldn’t bother trying to, since our efforts are doomed to fail and make us feel awful, and that those people who just don’t really like us might, in fact, turn out to do us some good — if we choose, like Duke Senior, to see things the right way.
