"There is no greater achievement in the world than making a one-time enemy your closest friend. At the core of enmity between two strangers lies indifference to the possibility of reconciliation. To convert enmity to friendship, the past should be left to sleep and a new day awakened.
True forgiveness of another comes and wholesomeness takes root when you realise that you cannot speak badly of them anymore even when you remember that you were bruised and broken because of them.
My mother used to say, 'Billy if you want to beat your enemy forever, make them your friend.'
I don't know why but is always easier to forgive an enemy than to pardon the misgivings of a friend. Perhaps it is because when an enemy wrongs you, you more readily expect it, but when a friend does you down, it always carries a sense of betrayal with the sourness of experience? My own feeling is that the hardest enemy to make your friend is the one who already pretends to be your friend.
There is a story that was turned into a film of the world's longest duel between two French Hussar officers in the Napoleonic wars. They were called Dupont and Fournier. Their feud started with a misunderstanding and went on for nearly nineteen years. They fought over thirty duels, with neither man showing any inclination of calling a truce. Finally, they decided to end it because one of them was getting married. By that time they had forgotten the incident which led to one of them having taken offence two decades earlier.
Of all the people who should never become your enemy is a member of your family, whatever the original action that caused the rift between you. Should you still hold ill-will or enmity against a family member, consider being the first to let it go and make peaceful overtures. In the sad event, your gesture of goodwill goes begging, keep the offer open and don't use their refusal to shake hands as a justification for your initial action.
It is a sad truth that we cannot always make things sweeter which have carried a sour and bitter taste for so long, but there is absolutely no need to swallow the bitterness; far better for yourself to spit it out and drink afresh." William Forde: January 20th, 2018.