something in the air?

A person I thought was one of my best friends all of a sudden stopped talking. Stopped cold without explanation. Quit responding to IMs, emails, phone calls. Strange.


The other day, a former workmate seemed kinda down. I asked and he wrote: "I just realized some people aint worth being treated like people so I been weeding out the bad ones in my life trying to surround myself more like minded people."

Hold that thought.

Around 99, maybe 2000, I first thought about starting a blog. I was surfing the net last spring when I found and bookmarked a blog starter site and then promptly forgot about it. Until yesterday morning.

I spent the better part of a cold and cloudy Saturday starting my own blog. By chance, one of the first blogs I stumble on is one where the author had just been betrayed by someone they had long counted as a genuine friend. Has there been an Invasion of Fake Friend Body Snatchers?

Of course not. Over the years, technology may have changed how things are done, but across a range of behaviors, people act in 2008 like they did 5,000 years ago. Some people are real and honorable and open and honest; most aren't. Good, honorable, open and honest people are not all that common.

After he'd experienced similar events one too many times last year, The Nephew® thought it might be best to create a façade, a mask he could put on at will when first getting to know someone, and take it off only when he felt he could trust the person he was with. I understood but no, that's a bad idea.

Certain facts became evident:
1) high-quality people are rare;
2) it's best to be real, honorable, honest and truthful so that when you meet the rare like-minded person, you'll recognize each other.
3) It's gonna take some luck, but being true to yourself is the only way to live
4) Lying to other people only means that you're constantly lying to yourself.

One day last year on Face The Nation, Bob Schieffer talked about keys and locks. How people are lucky if they find that special relationship or that special job that fits them. Friends are like that, too. Either you click like a lock and key, or you don't. Time will tell.

Bottom line: if a friendship over anything less than murder, robbery, extreme mental, physical or whatever abuse, it was not a friendship and they were not a friend. Their departure from your life was just a matter of time. Good that it happened sooner rather than later when you'd have paid an even higher price.