Love your enemy.

As your life has gone, you’ve never been much of a winner. Albeit you reached the rank of Runner-up, thinking of how close you were makes you bitter. Encountering people with differing ideologies and preferences makes you frustrated and annoyed as if those other human beings are attached to you like glue. You curse them militantly, strategically reinforcing the perception of their stupidity. Of course you never announce these crimes with your lips for that is out of character. After all, you’ve rehearsed this play before. You are hateful behind the curtain, but never dare to let the facade fade.

You say you love well, but when you’re in a dry spell you treat others like hell. You claim you are a well-mannered person, full of compassion, care, and consideration, yet one examination of how you spoke to your mother on the phone last week reveals the apathy you have for even the woman who gave you life.

The woman who gave you life.

Still, you hate those who care the most because they know how broken you are. Other people are the problem. You may struggle, but it is they who fall.

They are frustrated from their collected file of feuds.

They are groaning from their demoralizing gross of games.

They are hurt from their exhaustive home of hues.

And so are you.

Would you claim to know everything at any one point in time? Why then, do you act as though you do. Why then, do you treat others as less human than you?

You prove nothing of love by treating those who love you with rectitude. Anyone can love those who treat them well. In your pride you say you respect them for who they are, but in your inner-person you are vain and simply look forward to the reflection of yourself you see in them.

Let off your haughtiness and self-admiration. As they bring you down, you realize what is happening, but they are the only companions you’ve ever known. So you hold on to the very things that have brought on your destruction. If you do not learn to love your enemy, what is to say you won’t become apathetic to those currently called friend?

The truth is that you choose who and what to forgive. The proper struggle to be militant in is loving both those who hate you and those called friend, forgiving often and making amends.

*Special thanks to Katy Chapell for creative editing