This is the third installment of a three-part series about feeling whatever we feel as we reflect on our shared humanity.
Our Own Best Enemies
While mindfulness teachers tend to emphasize focus-building strategies more than other approaches, I’ve always found that mixing things up with empathy- and gratitude-strengthening exercises brings the exploration to life. It’s similar to how cross-training works in physical fitness: each capacity strengthens the others and elevates the whole game. The results somehow become more than the sum of their parts.
Loving-kindness is usually positioned as a self-compassion tool, but it’s often taught in a way that feels more like an intellectual exercise than an experiment in emotional awareness—one that can set the stage for a different kind of relationship with yourself, without trying to force your emotional responses to line up with some spiritual-sounding ideal.
I like to deconstruct this puzzle to make it more accessible to anyone who cringes at other explanations, which is what I’m attempting in this three-part series. In the first week, we explored imagining the well-being of people we find easier to love, while observing whatever emotional reactions arose. Last week, we watched how our minds work when we try to conjure up happiness for people we don’t know well, again noticing whatever we feel as we do.
When I first learned how to practice loving-kindness, I quickly noticed that the emotional warmth directed toward likable people created momentum that made it easier to cultivate similar feelings as I worked my way along the continuum. I had to get clever about imagining difficult people, even aging them in reverse to much younger versions of themselves. I was surprised by the complexity of my emotional reactions when I pictured my enemies as children, safe in the arms of an adoring young parent.
The most challenging part for me turned out to be considering my own well-being. Respected teachers insisted that you have to begin with yourself before moving on to other groups of people. I understood the logic of starting with myself, but I simply couldn’t do it. It was beyond challenging. It was impossible. Reciting the traditional phrases felt empty. My typically active visual imagination went blank. I felt nothing. I had to ignore the rule of beginning with myself to explore the technique at all.
It occurred to me that the reason it was so difficult to consider my own well-being was that I was approaching myself as if I were someone I liked. When I like someone, it’s easy to picture them safe, happy, and healthy. When I don’t like someone, I’m forced to turn to creative ways to navigate my resistance to focusing on whether or not the person deserves to have their basic needs met. I’ve imagined presidents of both parties as little children playing in the snow, warming up with tomato soup afterward, or having lullabies sung to them unironically by their mothers who hoped they’d have satisfying adult lives.
I couldn’t imagine my own happiness until I eventually realized that, rather than being someone I found likable, I was actually one of my difficult people. I might even be my most difficult person, which was a real bummer to realize. Forget about trying to love myself. What am I supposed to do with the realization that I’ve been actively loathing myself for most of my adult life without realizing it? Had I been recruiting others to play that role, sometimes just to make it easier to live with?
This proved to be a significant insight that led to exploring creative ways to solve the challenge. I came up with a strategy that worked for me and felt grounded in the essence of the traditional exercise. I pictured all the people in my life gathered in a circle around me. I abandoned the rote script I’d been instructed to say and tried to really imagine what their individual thriving might look, sound, and feel like. The shift in perspective invigorated me and sparked even more creativity.
Next, I imagined them taking turns putting the loving-kindness phrases into their own words, but aimed at me. I could see them. I could see myself. And when I let them speak in their own voices, I began to feel something. What I felt wasn’t comfortable. It felt raw, tender, and excruciatingly vulnerable. It felt awkward and embarrassing. I wanted to resist feeling it because it hurt too much. But when I began to actually take in the possibility that none of the people in my life had ever wanted me to suffer, even as they tried to reconcile how they thought my life was supposed to be instead of how it actually played out. The grief embedded in that gap was theirs to feel. I had my own heartbreak to navigate. Not even the strangers or enemies were actively trying to curse or reject me. I probably wasn’t even on their radar at all most of the time. This wasn’t based on logic. I wasn’t trying to talk myself into rationality. It was something tangible and complicated that I could feel in my body.
Regardless of our conflicts, the people in my life want me to thrive. There was no actual evidence that they intended for me to live my life alone outside the circle of humanity. I was left wondering if I could be the one keeping my persistent fear of being ostracized alive and fueling it with stories that resonated emotionally.
Once I had allowed a bit of basic human kindness to flow toward me, I jumped into the circle to offer it to myself. It didn’t feel peaceful, unless serenity is supposed to sting. It felt shattering and cathartic. It must have been odd to see a runner sobbing on the bike path that day, but it felt as natural as sweating and discovering what my muscles and lungs were capable of doing when given a chance. It was only in the flood of imagined acceptance that I realized the depth of my self-loathing. Observing it seemed to weaken its grip.
Looking back, this insight tied the whole exercise together and made its value pop in a practical yet profound way.
The challenge wasn’t really learning to love difficult people. It was noticing where I’d stopped seeing people—including myself—as fully human.
This has changed the way I hear the aphorism shared across all wisdom traditions that we should love our enemies. I need lovable people, but they don’t exercise my heart the way my enemies do. I hate to admit it, but noticing myself constructing narratives about people I don’t know—and working through my resistance to being internally hospitable toward the challenging people in my life—has deepened the closeness I feel with my family and friends. I feel genuinely grateful to my enemies for this surprising gift. You might even say I love them for it.
It’s amazing how impactful this exercise can be when I practice it regularly, even for a few minutes here and there, and even more fascinating to me is how often I forget to include it in the mix. Even my resistance to doing it can be a sign that it might be exactly what I need.
Here are some surprisingly effective ways I’ve discovered to recognize the basic humanity hiding in difficult people, which can be ourselves sometimes.
Avoiding Eye Contact
When considering the well-being of the people who are easy to love, I like to imagine their faces and facial expressions. It can feel wonderful. But when we imagine difficult people, it can help to avoid picturing their faces. Try turning them around or imagining observing them from behind or from a safe distance, and see how much less challenging the task becomes.
Using the Benjamin Button Method
Imagining my difficult people as young adults, teens, and children can be a powerful way to connect with their humanity. When all else fails, I can try to remember that they were once babies whose parents loved them and wanted the best for them. Putting this universal image to work can really help me step down from my self-appointed judge of who deserves to be part of the larger human family.
Objects in the Rear-View Mirror Feel Less Personal than They Appeared
I stopped trying to imagine other people’s humanity when they’re actively making my life harder, but sometimes recalling them later can be a powerful practice. At the end of the day, I can reflect on careless drivers, annoying influencers, and celebrities I’m convinced don’t deserve the spotlight, and consider that there’s a human in there I don’t need to like. Humanizing them in whatever big and small ways I can seems to humanize me.
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Open to Reinterpretation
Several years ago, during a silent meditation retreat, I got annoyed when a young woman sat across from me at breakfast.
Exercise
This exercise offers flexible ways to connect with the humanity you share with everyone, without pressure to like everyone or condone behaviors that conflict with your values.
It also helps undermine the tendency to reject ourselves at a fundamental level without realizing it, especially when we don’t like ourselves or regret what we’ve done.
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
Before or after boring or contentious meetings
Before or after medical appointments
Before or after emotionally charged family time
