Do your enemies have to be mine?

It seems a couple of my co-workers had decided they liked me. One of them gave me a referral for an apartment that rents out only to people known by the owner. It is a great place, and I currently live there.

These two sat with me at lunch in the cafeteria, and often dropped by my spot at work just to check on me, and say hello.

One of them especially seemed to actually care quite a bit about my well-being, and I thought finally I had started to make some friends at work.

I transferred to a different part of the company, and I met a young lady there who for some unknown reason, started to confide in me about her trials and tribulations, and even the occasional triumph.

As it turns out, she is the sister of an ex-wife of one of the men who had befriended me.

It didn't take long until my "friend" informed me that he did not like my new friend at all. I made no comment to him about this, other than acknowledging what he said. He then further informed me that he did not care for the others I was becoming friendly with there, that they were aliens who should go back to the country they came from.

The friendly visits to say hello ceased, and I became a sort of outcast to my previous "friends". Then they actually heard me speaking in a "foreign" language. Now I truly had exchanged my friend status to one of enemy.

I list Dances With Wolves as one of my favorite movies. I do so with reason. One of the parts of it that stuck with me is the part where the loo tentant wants to join the war party against a murderous tribe, and he is asked why would he go to war against someone who had done him no harm.

Do your enemies have to be mine?

Do my enemies have to be yours?