keep your friends close and your enemies closer

If you want to know who is the original author of that quote, please. . . Google it. I'm here to talk about the second part of that quote.

When I think about keeping my enemies closer, first thing that came to my mind was "I won't do that! It's manipulative! It's evil!" Well, now here I am, with insomnia, so I have more time to really think about it.

After 1 hour of conversation with myself, I realized that it's evil, if the intention is evil. If I keep my enemies closer so I can pretend to be their friends, then that's evil. If it's because I want to easily manipulate them, then it's evil. But, if I'm only trying to avoid getting hurt by my enemies, then it's not evil. For instance, I can avoid giving them my ideas so they can't steal it.

But then, there's the problem of pretending to be nice to your enemies to keep them closer. Isn't that lying? You don't like them but you pretend to like them? Well, let's take this intention thingy a step further. What if we really try to be nice to them? Not because we like them, but because we're good human beings that like to be nice to everyone. Now we're talking!

Keeping our enemies closer because we are truly nice to everyone, is a good thing! Now we have the advantage of knowing our enemies, AND we are truly nice to them. Who knows, our enemies might even pick up one or two good vibes from us and change their "evil" ways. By introducing "good" in their lives, they might want to spread that "good" around.

However, do NOT sacrifice yourself for your enemies. This might be obvious to some but not to all. Use your own judgment to know when you cross the line from being good to being stupid. If you give all your money to help your enemies, but your family can't eat, then please, please, just give your money to me. You're too stupid anyway to have them.

I'll stop digressing. The point is, now I can keep my enemies closer without being pretentious, and still be a good person. It's another way for us to spread goodness around. Have I mentioned the word good? Good. I'm not sure, so I'll say good again just for good measure. Is that good enough?

Why am I stuck with the word good? It may be because I don't feel good. I just got out of surgery and I can't drink my rum. And that's NOT GOOD. Please someone drink a shot of rum for me!