Karma Is a Cat Purring in My Lap

Advice for a reader who wants to know how to have an enemy.

A Cattywampus reader wrote in for advice with the following question. You, too, can submit questions for me to answer here in my newsletter. Just email me and make sure the word ADVICE is in the subject line. I am heatherannehogan at gmail dot com.

Dear Heather Hogan,

You seem like a good person genuinely! I've been following you for over a decade. I don't know of a lot of writers who've managed to survive this long on the internet with their noses clean/reputations intact, and you've managed to do it while also escaping the burning flames of more than one publication. I'm writing this question selfishly because I have come to think of one of my co-workers as my real enemy, which makes me feel kind of bad about myself. (Who am I, the Joker? An arch-nemesis? Really??). I do not agree with this person EVER. And they don't agree with me either. Every suggestion I make, they shoot down. Every innovative idea I have, they pick holes in it. They’re constantly telling me to “take the L.” I was talking to my wife about it and she said "I'll bet even Heather Hogan has enemies." That's why I'm writing. This is so weird but do you have enemies, Heather Hogan? How do you handle it? 

Yours most sincerely,

Joker(?)

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Note: In the following answer I'm talking, of course, about enemies on an interpersonal level, not about larger evil perpetuated by governments, religions, political parties, etc. That's a whole other thing. We should NOT look the other way when extreme harm is being caused on a larger scale. Free Palestine, protect trans kids, Black Lives Matter — there's no compromise on those things.

My dear Joker,

Thank you for writing to me with this question! It made me laugh and also is the second question I've gotten in the last few weeks about having enemies. There must be something in the air. The other question also wondered how I'd escaped mostly unscathed, publicly, when the internet is such a vindictive theater — but they decided it must be because Stacy handles all my foes for me (which also made me laugh, and would be completely true if I would let her). 

I'm very lucky to mostly like and mostly be liked by the people I've engaged with and worked with over the past 16 years as a professional lesbian writer on these internet streets, but your wife is not wrong: I for sure know people who would step over my half-dead body in a dark alley and keep on walking, whistling a happy tune the whole way. I think that's probably true of most people, though. If you're a universally popular person that literally everyone adores, you're probably also a moral shapeshifter without a firm sense of self or boundaries. I can say that because there was a time in my life when I, too, was that chameleon. I have enemies now because I got stronger and braver! 

That's the first thing I want you to know: You cannot be both morally upright and 100% totally and completely exalted amongst the people in your world. And that doesn't even mean the people in your world aren't good and decent folks. It just means that even in the most righteous groups of humans, we won't always all agree on what's the best and correct action in any given situation. There are people in my life I hold in the highest esteem who have also, at times, been furious with me about decisions I've made (decisions I still think were correct). But our relationships have endured because we understand this very human conundrum: that a whole bunch of things can be true at once, and we're all coming at life from perspectives that have been formed by our own personal unique experiences, needs, fears, insecurities, relationships, etc. 

Our culture has kind of morphed into this zero-sum game, where every situation has a winner and a loser, so it's easy to think anyone who opposes you is also your enemy. We're not particularly great, as a people, with conflict and nuance. Our brains are wired to think we’re right, right, right! I don't think that disagreeing with someone makes them your enemy, though. Even if you disagree with them often. The higher the stakes in a disagreement, the more likely you are to start thinking about people as enemies when they oppose you, but I think it's also important to remember that higher stakes activate our moral convictions (when we have them).

I'm hammering on this point because you said these consistent disagreements with your co-worker make you feel bad about yourself, but I think that's maybe just a part of living a good solid life where you're consistently engaging with things that really matter to you. 

I think things take a turn toward "enemy" when vindictiveness peeps its little head out of the woodwork, when we don't just disagree with someone, but start wishing harm would come to them, maybe even wishing we could harm them, or taking it upon ourselves to make them suffer in some way, to "put them in their place." Having an enemy is less about standing firm in your own beliefs and decisions and boundaries, and more about going on the offensive, more about punishment. It's not like, "Wow, you are so wrong." Or even, "Wow, I don't like you." It's like, "Wow, you hurt me and I'm gonna hurt you right back." (Or, "Wow, I hope you get hurt, even if I'm not the one to do it.”)

How I personally handle people who want me to suffer is, honestly, by believing in karma. Not karma in the sense that he's my boyfriend or anything like that, not like karma is some kind of cosmic personal quid pro quo retribution. But like: The more you do good, the more you see good. The more ways you look to put hope and joy and love into the universe, the more ways you're going to see hope and joy and love coming back to you. Good actions, good intent, those things put goodness into the world, and the more good stuff that's in the world, the greater chance you're gonna encounter good stuff too. That’s basic math! Good stuff happens to me all the time, and I think it's because I'm on the lookout for it. Generosity and gratitude work together in a graceful cycle, in my experience.

I've watched the opposite be true as well. The meanest, pettiest, most vindictive people I know are also the most paranoid and thin-skinned. The people who have tried the hardest to harm me are the most miserable people I have ever met, the ones who always feel slighted, always feel persecuted, always feel like everything is everyone else's fault, and I'm just part of a whole world that's out to get them. 

I can't say karma is "real," but I can say that causing hope or causing harm deeply affects your perception of hope or harm being aimed back at you. 

Now, if you have someone you consider an enemy, and they really are truly trying to actively, significantly harm you in some way, you're going to have to do something about that. You're going to have to confront them, or go over their head, or remove yourself from their orbit. But that's a lot less common, I think, than having people in your life who simply do not like you and would be perfectly happy if you got hit in the head with bird poop on a regular basis. Those people just kinda suck, and are generally miserable anyway, and having to exist in their own vindictively cyclical lives is punishment enough for them, I think. 

Working to heal your own self is ALWAYS going to make you a happier, better person than working to get back at someone who hurt you. 

Another thing to consider is whether or not you even like or respect this enemy. I’ve had so many conversations over the years with friends who have been completely beside themselves because they’re not liked by someone, and when I ask, “But do you value their opinions on other things? Do you respect them? Do you want to have a relationship with them?” The answers are almost always, “Well, no and no and no.” If that’s true, why do you even care if they consider you their nemesis? Being disliked — being an enemy, even — to a toxic person is actually kind of a compliment. I wear the hate of the person who loathes me most in the world like a badge of honor.

And that's how I've "kept my nose clean" these last 16 years. I haven't always been successful at not retaliating against people who have hurt me, but mostly I have and I know for a fact that my life is much, much better because of it. I just try to focus on doing good and healing my own hurts and cultivating hope, even when it feels impossible. I’m okay with being some people’s enemy. I know who I am. I know what I’m about. If karma really is a cat purring in my lap, I'm living a good life. 

love,

Heather