What To Do If Someone Wants To Be Your “Formidable Foe”

I have been invited to be just that, but quite frankly I don’t know what that means, and yet here I am, right smack in the middle of another story. Now, you all know I can’t make this stuff up - right. 

Who says ‘formidable foe’ in the year 2013 – that phrase has got to be straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. So of course, I googled Edgar Allan Poe Formidable Foe – go ahead I’ll wait if you want to google it yourself – did you find this phrase “But the Floridian savage was a more formidable foe than his Mexican brother — more hardy of frame, and more implacable in his revenge.” Right out of Edgar Allan Poe, if she would have used one more word we could accuse her of plagiarism, but on with the rest of the story.

Webster’s dictionary defines formidable as an adjective and “something that causes fear and is difficult to overcome.” It defines foe as a “an enemy or opponent.” So, I guess this will be our starting point in the story. Yes, I have someone who wants to be my enemy or opponent and wants me to perceive them as something that causes fear and is difficult to overcome. 

Firstly, let me just say that I fear no man or woman. We are all human beings just here on this earth for a limited time and trying to figure this thing called life out. And, I was never taught to see people as my enemies. So then let’s say this person just wants me to perceive them as an “opponent that is difficult to overcome.” The problem is that she does not know that I am currently in a Masters of Psychology program. In this program I am currently reading the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 

So, as a student of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders next year I would be able to diagnose “crazy,” and give it a luxurious name, such as bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, or schizophrenic disorder; but this year I get to call it what it is, this want to be “formidable foe” is just plain “crazy.” And, I am being made the brunt of the crazy’s craziness. 

I don’t know what to do if someone wants to be your formidable foe. I answered the call as best I could and now will have to leave it for the judge to decide. (I will post a follow up comment.) Thus far, one good thing has come out of this story, and that is that I was reminded of a great author. I leave you with this excerpt from the poem Dreamland by Edgar Allen Poe:

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule—

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE—Out of TIME.