What makes great friends and sworn enemies? How useful is an island of peace in which we can while away our sometimes senseless and pointless existences because we have a place called home, for love and friendship? Very useful, you think. In fact, you probably think it is the only thing every person in a God-less world needs.
“You are reminded of how human everyone else is despite the plethora of things in their control – their jobs, their personal lives, their freedoms – all of which they seem to control at some level. And yet, it hurts when that person who became a sworn enemy you wished to outwit has now gone far ahead of you in ways, and is yet at odds with what you represent. You’re not a loser – you just haven’t been fortunate enough or won the same things. You’ve won different things. You’re working things out, hoping things will work and hoping to either never confront this person again, or to never have to compete with him again. But today’s realities may change, and you may get back in touch inadvertently, you may make that big mistake, in a weak moment, of having to speak to that person again. And I say to myself – don’t. Don’t give that person a chance, if such a conundrum manifests. Don’t let the thought that you’re inadequate face you, and defend yourself, and believe that you can kill this beast. It merely takes more perseverance on your path. It takes discipline – this enemy you want to kill is within – and it is not the hate for disgusting existences such as this person, because you know that the principles can never be reconciled – yours and his, and that therefore, you will forever remain enemies. This is how things are and will be. Your principles cannot coexist in the same space. Goliaths are seldom only in one’s head – they have real and tangible manifestations. Be a Minotaur while you can, build your defences, work with the chicanery that you can muster with all the goodwill you have.
You resume association with a friend, who in conceit you considered to be lesser than you or one of your deeds, who in your foolishness you considered trite, who in your wisdom you considered indispensable. Your fallible character has led you back to him, who welcomes you with open arms and who considers you no less a friend than you seemed, despite your past malice.
Do you deserve what you got for your past behaviour? You know that thinking such things can become a folly, a mere blandishment of one’s own belief in a form of ill-defined causation – a causation that few understand and even fewer practice. It is when such self-effacing thoughts cross one’s mind that one is confronted with the task of rising above them – because even then, one’s mind is considering the possibilities that you’re dying, that you’re losing, that your moral fibre is being drained from you and that your principles and promises to yourself are being washed away, because the animus you based so much of your life on is weakened by the alacrity with which your friends find him good.”
“Where will my solace come from? Does a God not exist? Will I forever remain defeated by this man, who unfairly took what was mine? Do these objects of worship and these words of philosophy bring nothing more than momentary hope? Will my struggles disappear, will I not be redeemed my fair share of success? Or is fate merely a game that my adversary understood better than me? Friends, do you welcome me and be steadfast? I wish to not see my enemy again, I wish to be only with friends. I wish to fight the battles insde myself – is there no respite for me?”
