Monday morning.  After five days away on retreat the first piece of news to filter through is the news of the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of America in an attack against the compound in Pakistan in which he lived.  The news and discussion in the following days has been endless and no doubt it will continue.  It seems to me to be an event too important to overlook on my blog even whilst I wonder what to say.  Finally, I settle on this:  the power of the enemy image.

I am not talking here about current debate on whether or not to release photos of the dead Osama bin Laden.  Rather, I am referring to what happens when we hold people as enemies in our minds.  It seems to me that, regardless of the acts committed by another, to hold someone as our enemy carries many risks.  Amongst these is the risk that we perpetrate all sorts of violence against others, doing things in relation to our so-called enemies that we would not do in relation to those we love and respect.  In the end, we have to live with the acts we have committed, whether or not they were in some way “justified”.

The examples are widespread – universal even.  Think of the parent who adminsters a slap alongside the admonition:  “don’t treat your brother (friend, pet rabbit etc.) in that way!”  Think of the customer who loses his or her temper in response to some act of perceived poor service, swearing and shouting at the person concerned.  Think of the friend who, upset, tells all sorts of other people what’s wrong with the person whose actions have stimulated strong emotions.  The examples are also abundant in the workplace.  Think of the individual who, not receiving from his or her boss support for which s/he yearns and for which s/he hasn’t asked begins to form an image of the boss as some kind of monster and to talk to others of the boss’s failings.  Think of the member of staff in our team who just isn’t producing the results we want and whom we begin to see as incompetent, lazy, stupid… And if it’s not the boss, or one of our direct reports, perhaps it’s our chief rival for a job (even the person who got the job we didn’t), John in Accounts, or IT, or, or, or…  Of course, the acts of violence are often subtle rather than overt.  They are in the way we think about another.  They are in the way we talk about another to third parties.  They are in the way we try to convey a message to another without openly stating what’s on our mind.  The list goes on.

In writing, I want to share my compassion for everyone involved in this spiral.  We do not know – though we may try to guess – what needs another is trying to meet or what prompts them to seek to meet those needs in a particular way.  Still, every action they take – no matter how violent or incomprehensible to us – is taken with positive intentions.  We, too, have positive intentions when we form enemy images of another in our minds or respond to violence with violence.  And when we imagine for one moment that we are in some way justified in committing acts of violence, still, we have positive intentions.  We are both perpetrator and victim.  There are moments when we are the victim of our most basic biology:  when, to use Daniel Goleman’s term, we are seized by an amygdala hijack.  In these moments our perception of a threat triggers a fight-or-flight response which was designed millennia ago as a response to threats we no longer face and which, still, kicks in in the moment.

As powerful as such moments are, we have choices to make.  We get to choose, provided we can understand the difference between stimulus and response.  In the gap between “X is happening” and “I believe Y” there is the opportunity to replace violence with nonviolence and in ways which preserve the humanity and dignity of self and other.  Either way, we lead by the choices we make.  Osama bin Laden led – as best we understand it – when he chose to perpetrate acts of violence (including the 1998 American Embassy bombings, the 2001 attack against New York’s Twin Towers).  He did so with positive intentions, seeking justice in the face of injustices, as he saw them, perpetrated by the United States against his fellow Muslims.  Right now, those of us who would wish for a different approach get to lead by the responses we choose to Osama bin Laden’s death.

I wonder, what enemy images are you harbouring towards others in your life?  And how do you choose to respond?