BUT SHE WAS RIGHT
By Barbara Cawthorne Crafton

There is no bond between people quite like the delicious one of intensely disliking the same person. It is furtive, at first, conspiratorial, as the two of you carefully explore just how pungent you can be with each other in the zingers you exchange about the object of your derision. Soon, though, you have thrown caution to the winds. No insult is too terrible. The mere innocent mention by someone else of the hated name evokes an exquisite secret exchange of significant glances.

To my shame, I have been involved in more than one such relationship. I've noticed each time, though, that the forbidden pleasure of those exchanges fades after a time. I began to feel guilty about them, to wish that my friendship with my partner in disdain were based on something more worthy than just disliking the same person. I became aware, in fact, of having overlooked some good qualities in the one we scorned. In fact, as luck would have it, I'd be thrown together with him right about then, and remember all the things I'd said about him behind his back.

Trying to stop the malice game with your friend, though, is easier said than done. It was fun, that gossip, and she doesn't want to stop. It turns out that it was as you feared: nothing of substance--nothing that's any good, any way--unites you. The way you have conducted your relationship has brought out the worst in both of you.

The game may be fun, but the price is too high. "If you can't say anything nice about someone, don't say anything at all," my mom used to say. "What a goody-goody," I would say to myself. BUT SHE WAS RIGHT.

"I am on the side of peace, but when
I speak of it, they are for war."
(Psalm 120:7)