Thought Directory

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Knowing Your Enemy

Why thank you, Mr. Grant...

Hey there, classmates.
It's been a while.
I just haven't felt like blogging much lately.
There were two reasons for this:
1. Life.
2. er.. laziness.

Life is consuming -- it's meant to be.
It IS after all your life.
And one of the biggest enemies of someone's life is laziness.
Speaking of enemies, that's what today's post is about.
Here comes the big in-post title text!

Knowing Your Enemies

Phew, that's a big title!

What is an enemy?
Let's define it.

Enemy:
  1. a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent.
2.
an armed foe; an opposing military force: The army attacked the enemy at dawn.
3.
a hostile nation or state.
4.
a citizen of such a state.
5.
enemies, persons, nations, etc., that are hostile to one another: Let's make up and stop being enemies.


Some dandy definitions.
In fact, the book I've been reading recently -- Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant -- is all about war and enemies. One thing he suggests during war is to Know Your Enemies. Wise man, but if you think he meant just on the battlefield or against a bully at school then you're sorely mistaken. He definitely meant both of those, but sometimes we fight even bigger battles inside ourselves. So should we know the enemies that are raging war within us? Precisely.   
So as an example, let me speak of one of the enemies inside of myself.

One of my greatest enemies is a big, ugly man named General Lazy the Couch-potato. To shorten his name, we'll call him General Lazy. It's not a bad thing to lose interest. It's a bad thing to lose interest out of laziness. As soon as I gave in to General Lazy's demands, I found that I'd lost interest entirely in blogging. It didn't happen the very day I felt too lazy to blog. No it happened after a few weeks of me feeling too lazy to blog.
No excuses for me there, eh?

Well, I found him out. I found his weakness. I knew what he was. General Lazy is very weak to something called "do-it-anyhow". And so I did it, I blogged, and here it is -- it feels great!
I'd then, of course, love to say that I took this secret weapon and utterly eradicated General Lazy and his armies of laziness... But I didn't. Sure, I found a way to fight him, but I remain fighting him every single day. Yet, as surely as I'll remain fighting, it will get easier to fight him every day. Boy, how my invincible foe will be laughed at then!

So what's the enemy inside you?
Tell me in the comment section below.
And be honest, as I was with you.



As always, your host,