enemies

Listening to a Dalai Lama audiobook on cultivating compassion.  Interesting thought:  be grateful for your enemies or anyone that creates difficulty for you.  They are your gurus in that nobody else can be as effective in teaching you patience, tolerance, or forgiveness.  I've thought about this since I heard it in the Audio-book.  He's right.  How else can you learn patience or forgiveness?  If you read about it in a book, at most you are persuaded intellectually.  This does not give you a chance to put your new ideas into action.  An enemy, or at least someone who makes you uncomfortable, gives you a unique opportunity to exercise tolerance, patience, and forgiveness.  Friends can't do this for you.  Only enemies.