Are The Best Friendships Forged From Past Aggression?

"...do I not destroy my enemies by making them my friends?" - Abraham Lincoln.​

I have no idea on the matter because I never really remember ever becoming friends with someone I hated. However, I did have this one friend I used to fight with a lot. But I knew him more than anyone else. I respected and could trust him more than anyone else and even the fighting, in retrospect, seemed more a sign of brotherhood than enmity.

I also realized that it is those people who give me competition or are on the verge of being intolerable because they don't readily concede to whatever I do or say that I end up liking and respecting the most. It's a bit difficult to articulate, but it seems to me that real friends don't pamper you, console you, agree with you, and all that. They challenge you, question you, prod you, and make you stronger, all while in some way still caring for you, though in their own way.

Perhaps it's because enemies draw out our deepest feelings. Both spend there time trying to understand and outmaneuver each other- always aware of each other. You don't need to willfully keep your enemies close, they are at the fore of your mind already. I can't really say I will ever become friends with an enemy. Maybe an opponent, a competitor, or some type of person that gives me a run for something I want, but an actual person who actually makes me consider them as an enemy...who knows. I think friendship from past enmity such as that is forged only when one enemy has spared the other from certain death or destruction- thereby saving his life and instilling a debt of gratitude. And even then, how could you trust someone that has spent so much effort fighting you. Some may become you friends, while some may take your friendship and strangle you with it.

If you didn't notice, this comes from my further reading of the 48 Laws. More and more I realize they are not laws at all. A law is absolute and these laws are only circumstantial- applicable in certain events and harmful, if not destructive, in others. Rather, these are guidelines. Notes of reference, if anything. It just goes to show you should never take anything in without questioning it.

Oh yeah, Abraham Lincoln... I believe he was assassinated.