Note: This is the sixth installment in a weeklong intensive, with one or two exercises per day (which are bolded). Please, if you follow this series in full or part, share your valuable experience and reaction to the enemy. And of course, good luck!
I’m writing this in a coffee shop. The man across from me just asked the woman beside me if it was strange that he was polishing his shoes.
Stirring her coffee with a long, plastic straw she looked up. “Yes”, she answered.
“Would you rather I not do this here? He asked.
“Yes, she replied. “I’d rather you do that at home.”
“I was anxious to do it”, he explained.
“Oh, were you”, she replied.
“Yes”, he asserted.
“Well, you asked me and I answered”, she retorted. “Do what you must”, and she returned to her knitting.
Oh the things I might do, if it weren’t for the enemy. They’d be so much worse than polishing my shoes. I can think of a few things I wouldn’t do, too. For starters, I’d never get out of bed when I was tired. In fact, I’d never get out of bed at all.
You see, without thinking too much about it, I believe that without the enemy I would be useless and unlovable and impractical and dead. So I’m very loyal to my enemy.
It’s time to consider this belief.
I fill one page, front and back, finishing this sentence over and over. What’s right about harboring my enemy is… I fill another page, front and back finishing this sentence: My experience without the enemy is…