There’s a Star Trek episode where the Klingons are trapped on board the Enterprise, fighting the crew. But something strange is going on, they kill each other but no one dies. They are consumed by hatred toward one another. They fight, kill, resurrect. And the cycle repeats itself over and over.

At last Kirk (of course) notices the pattern. He begins to suspect something is not as it appears to the natural eye. Spock does his tricorder readings, and they discover an unseen alien presence on board. This alien presence feeds on their negative emotions and grows stronger and stronger. Even though they realize the truth, they must now convince the cynical Klingons of the force at work against them. I won’t go into the entire plot but this is accomplished within the necessary one hour time period. The Enterprise crew and the Klingons join together in laughter and back slapping camaraderie, causing the unseen entity (until this crucial point in the story) to diminish in size and finally disappear, leaving their presence forever.

Where am I going with all of this? My brother and I have fought for years. I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered this nice little guy from my childhood days, but that memory seldom surfaced. The gulf between us widened and deepened. Then one day, after my dad died, I decided I was through fighting with him. I realized that just as in this Star Trek episode, there was an unseen entity at work in our relationship. As we fought, hated, disagreed, it grew stronger. So one day I stopped, I just stopped hating him, being mad at him, judging him. I made a quality decision that no matter what he did, I would not take offense or be angry with him.

I noticed a strange thing. Once that decision was made, we started getting along better. It’s taken some time, but our relationship is being rebuilt. He is responding to me now in the same manner I respond to him, positively. I no longer look at him through the eyes of the past, but toward the future and what I want our relationship to be.

There is an unseen entity at work in all our lives causing strife and division, causing us to hate those we should be closest to and those we hardly know, and I refuse to let him have his way.

Remember who the real enemy is.