FRIENDLINESS

FRIENDLY ENEMIES Part 1 Friendly enemies are those who come to sing your praises even when you know you have not done anything worth thanking you for. Friendly enemies flatter you even when you know very well inside you that you are wrong at and on a particular point. Friendly enemies can never tell you the truth of the public perception of your actions. Friendly enemies hail every of your actions even when people are genuinely crying foul. Friendly enemies dance ‘Makeba’, pop Champagne and make you dance naked in the public blind-folded. They have a way of making you wear ‘all is well’ look while your spirit groans for change and your face is covered with ‘UN-popped’ pimples and other ailments that announce your total failure in public service. The influence of friendly enemies is so overbearing that you may not have time to listen to the still small voice. The voice of the inner-mind is so subtle that it can easily be ignored in the euphoria of ‘I hold the ace’ celebrations. Friendly enemies always wear white teeth. The beam of their smiles is so comforting but it drags the subject to the mud. Friendly enemies are the once that recommends who should be your friend and choose your enemies for you. Living with friendly enemies leads to self-imposed roadblocks and locks you on autopilot. Friendly enemies possess some perverse human characteristics that like to make easy things difficult for you. As a public servant for instance, you have to break protocols at times to relate with your subjects to obtain their worries, expectations and loyalty to determine how you are faring with your services. It is called first hand information. Albert Einstein prints it this way, ‘To order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep’. The major problem of most public servants is the quest for success by all means. Albert Einstein disagrees with this hence he wrote, “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value”. A worthwhile life for public servant is a life lived for their subjects and friendly enemies cannot allow you live that way. One of the most outstanding characteristics of friendly enemies is to lurk with diabolic means to fan their victim. Moreover enemies systematically take over your functions and dispense them only to their selfish advantage and the resultant effect is that your subjects are left in the lurch. Yes! You fail to provide for them because they are barricaded from you. They neither have access to you nor you to them. Watch your back, friendly enemies are more dangerous than enemies.