HEAT OF HATERS

May 29th, 2021

1140: Heat of Haters

When thrown on the back foot from a competitor’s offensive attack, it’s intuitive and natural to try and strike back.  There’s a couple important considerations that are performed by default which could use a little reconsideration.

For example, just think of a small child getting angry at you.  It screams and yells and tries to hurt you by swinging their tiny fists at you.  Do you react as you normally would to competitor who has launched an attack?  

No, of course not.  

The clear and obvious advantage in strength and option that you have changes the situation drastically.  At the most you try to embrace the child, to calm it’s torrent of emotions and most of all, attempt to keep that child from accidentally hurting itself.

Now, to juxtapose the instance of a powerless child with a real opponent, where lies the real difference?  Presumably it’s in the strength of your opponent.  A strong opponent requires a far different and stronger reaction does it not?  Or does it?

What would be required to view an enemy as someone to care for, someone to nurture in conflict in order to save not just yourself, but both of you?  Ordinarily it’s a gigantic increase in strength that gives someone the confidence to have this perspective and take action in accordance to it.  But what’s lost in this assumption are the revelations and ideas that can pop up in the mind if you take this perspective regardless of huge differences in strength.  

Our perspective determines the kind and quality of ideas that occur to us.  If we are solely threatened, and our perspective is dominated by that idea, then all ideas about how to deal with the situation ramify from that initial condition.  If, however, we can manage to maintain a perspective that doesn’t see the competitor so much as a threat but simply sees the space between as one of unresolved conflict, then the ideas that are available to us are different than if we are consumed by the notion that we might suffer wounds.  Merely nurturing a different perspective breeds different ideas, and in the instance of a competitor, no matter how much stronger they might be, the right perspective can redirect the energy and effort of that formidable enemy into one of virtuous arrangement.  

In short,

Don’t fight an enemy in whom you can find a friend.