A friend of mine may be losing his job. One of his co-workers (we’ll call him Larry) has decided that my friend (we’ll call him Jeff) is the problem in his life and that his life will become wonderful and problem-free once he’s gotten rid of Jeff.
Now, Jeff has acknowledged making some mistakes. They haven’t been intentional and aren’t egregious, but he sees how they can be frustrating to Larry. That’s often the case in these kinds of situations. One person blows it in a small or big way and another person takes it personally, turning the first person into a problem.
There’s an unnoticed irony here.
The first person isn’t a problem. He’s caused a problem, but he hasn’t done it intentionally. If he had done it intentionally, he’d be a problem. But if he hasn’t, he’s not the problem himself. He’s just done something that’s caused a problem. Are you following me with that?
But when someone does something I don’t like and I turn that person into a problem to be solved, guess what? I’ve become a problem.
When I set myself against a situation, I become a solution. When I set myself against a person, I become a problem.
And that’s what happened with Jeff and Larry. Jeff made some mistakes that needed to be fixed. Larry turned Jeff into an enemy — the word we avoid using but which signifies a person who has become a problem for us. When Larry turned Jeff into an enemy, he became an enemy to Jeff. By making Jeff a problem, he himself became the problem.
There are times when people become enemies. They really do. They actively seek to tear us down. They gossip. They lie. They manipulate situations. They set us up. They get in the way of our success. They rally people against us. And so on. Sometimes, it can lead to physical violence, but generally it’s the more subtle verbal violence that they resort to.
Here’s the thing: I don’t become someone’s enemy until they see me as a problem first.
Now, simply walking into a room may be all I need to do in order to become a problem. If a person sees me as a rival for a job or a romantic relationship with someone else, even if I haven’t done anything to suggest this, I’ve become a problem and they may become an enemy to me. How many babies have become problems to their older siblings just by being born?
So, the question is: Have I become a problem or have I become an enemy?
Is my presence or behavior problematic to someone else, causing that person to treat me like a problem and thereby becoming my enemy?
Or is their presence or behavior problematic me to, causing me to treat them like a problem and thereby becoming an enemy to them?
When I’m being treated like a problem, I have the opportunity to diffuse the situation by apologizing and asking how my behavior is affecting them negatively. Hopefully, that will make me seem like less of a problem and make my behavior or the situation the problem. If I can move things in this direction, we’re moving toward resolution, since a situation or a behavior can be solved a lot easer than a person can be solved.
When I find myself becoming an enemy to someone because that person seems like he’s become a problem for me, I need to step back and decide whether it’s the person who is intentionally causing problems or if I’ve turned the person into a problem because he threatens me in some way. If it’s the first case, reread the previous paragraph. If it’s the second case, then I have the opportunity to stop thinking of the person as a problem and to start thinking about how behavior or circumstances can be changed to be less problematic for me.
None of this is easy, because emotions get tangled up so quickly and thickly. But it’s possible to untangle them if we can see what’s going on. At least, we can try.