Recasting Enemies
.jpg)
Enemies are not born. They are created out of our fears, insecurities, imaginings, and learned responses. A grandbaby was just born into a toddler’s family. This toddler doesn’t care who holds the new baby, as long as it is not their mother. No matter how the family has references this newborn as her new baby, the presents and attention lavished upon the toddler, she considers the new one as interfering with her safety, security, and place. She has made the newborn an enemy, no input from the newborn required. We create our enemies by choice. It has little to do with the other. It is about ourselves. Our lack of security, trust, confidence, and the way we have ordered the world feels under attack. It matters not whether we are being attacked. We misplace our confidence and security. Perhaps it is our sense of control, our understanding of how the world works, our sense of place, what gives us worth. Fear-mongering sells us an enemy on which to pin all our angst. I