Enemy Appreciation Day

From his new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound

By Robert C. Koehler

For all we owe to them, shouldn’t we maybe set aside an Enemy Appreciation Day? Hugs ’n’ kisses, darling, thanks for being you.

I say this less facetiously than you might think. Such a holiday has the potential to be more educational and transforming than any other on the calendar, if on this day we suspended, however briefly, even our most justified shudders of aversion and turned petulance and malice into celebration and wonder. I’m not suggesting that we love our enemies, either personal or ideological, merely that we alter our relationship to them for a few minutes out of the year.