Love your enemies ...

Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be bastards! I heard this while watching a British spy drama series sometime ago. Then recently in a conversation, I borrowed this phrase to reflect on how true it can be nowadays in the dark side of the business world and on shadowy behaviours of the people involved. On the surface we see nasty confrontations with names calling, back stabbing and finger pointing that resulted from greed, betrayal and irresponsibility. Deeper below, there are those who smile at you but are already executing their cunning scheme. These people stretch out to shake your hand while holding a knife behind their back ready to stab without feeling any guilt. In today’s “dog eats dog” world, I personally witnessed so many incidents of betrayal and greed with plots that came right out of some Hong Kong drama series.

Sad isn’t it? People mislead people and friends deceive friends in stories of corrupted business dealings, malicious office conflicts and high handed dirty politics. Many are so caught up in the process that they forget very easily. They forget about loyalty and friendship.

I am not sure about others but I am still the very “old school” type of people where we place loyalty and friendship with very high respect. I am one of those who still appreciate the saying “internally we depend on family and externally we depend on friends”. I still believe in “tai kar pak chi seong” (we support each other to move up) but that is not happening anymore now. Today it is “ngor chai chi lei seong” or “lei chai chi ngor seong” (I step on you to move up or you step on me to move up). Words like friendship, trust, dignity, honestly, hard work, fair, responsibility and loyalty are often purposely ignored. And talking about loyalty, “old school” people like me are still very much about loyalty but we are a fast dying breed. Someone said this to me “if you want loyalty, go and get a dog”. Well, I like dogs but I also like to believe there are still many “old school” people like me who believe in the values of loyalty and friendship. As a matter of fact, I am lucky to have a bunch of these very good loyal “old school” friends around me.

So ask yourself, do you have real good friends around you? I hope you do. If you don’t, could it be that they rather love their enemies because you turned out to be a bastard?
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