Principles and Suggestions for Living Well

Among the principles and disciplines for living that I'm developing for myself these days are:

--Never make a trip without planning to accomplish at least two goals on that trip.

--Anyone worth meeting is worth meeting in a calm context when both of you are sober and alcohol-free, and you can actually hear what the other person is saying when he speaks, and you actually have at least 30 consecutive minutes of mutually-polite, mutually-enjoyable conversation (as distinct from a one-sided monologue) with the other individual.

--The minute you identify a noteworthy problem or barrier in your life--for instance, you suddenly discover to your shock that the front headlight to your motor vehicle that is not producing any light---attempt to identify in your mind each of the worst-case scenarios that could occur for you if you don't correct that problem that same day. A front headlight not functioning properly could trigger a collision with another motor vehicle, or with a pedestrian attempting to cross the road in front of you. Just as importantly, a front headlight not functioning puts you in violation of the law if you drive that motor vehicle at nighttime. That, in turn, could result in a traffic citation being issued to yourself by a police officer.

Correcting an urgent problem of that type within minutes after you identify that problem is "good heads-up football," as college-football commentators often put it.
The level of urgency of a problem you have just identified in your own life should help you decide whether to solve that problem that same minute, that same hour, that same day, that same week, that same month, or later that calendar year.

--Strive to sincerely and honestly praise prospective friends and current mutual-consent friends of yours at least 10 times more often than you criticize them.

--Remember that even though men and male youths are generally assumed to be more self-confident than women and girls, those same men and male youths often receive far less in the way of sincere personal praise from others than do the ladies. Do not hesitate to be very generous in offering personal praise to other men, and to male youths, if you truly feel that they deserve that praise.

---A true gentleman should not shy away from offering sincere and polite praise to another man, or to a male youth, for exhibiting good taste in his own fashionwear.

---Behind every violent male outlaw of today are hundreds or thousands of persons in that individual's own past who chose to withhold from him kind words of praise for law-abiding and honorable conduct he had pursued.

---Before you pose a question to someone, you might reflect a bit on whether you already have the answer to that question. If you do, and you're completely sure you already know the answer to that question, you might want to pose another question altogether to that same individual---an intriguing question for which you don't yet know the answer. Otherwise, you could simply savor that moment of harmonious silence resulting from the elimination of an unnecessary question; and it's likely your listener will also be savoring that empathetic moment of silence.

---When you pose a personal question to someone about himself, you might first ask yourself whether in the past year or two you have posed that same exact question to dozens of other persons who were quite different from himself. Is the question you are currently about to pose to this gentleman original, creative, thoughtful, and responsive to your listener's individuality?

---The persons who elicit relaxed laughter and relaxed smiles from yourself are the individuals you are most likely to someday miss. And you'll find you are very surprised to miss them so much---before, you had always taken them for granted.

--If you feel sorry for yourself because no talent scout has discovered you yet, try being your own talent scout. Discover and Foster and hone your own creative talent. Then generously share that joyous creativity with others.

--For every occasion in which you complain that no one has "discovered" your own talents, ask yourself how often in the last year you made a point of yourself discovering and praising another person's talents.

--When meeting a new acquaintance with a common legal name, you might want to ask that individual to please state and spell for you his or her middle name. That information could help you to keep up with that individual over a multi-year period.

---Of the various wholesome and law-abiding persons whom you associate with, which individual seems to draw out in you a natural spontaneity, lack of inhibition, and a cheerful flair for wit and humor and yourself being entertaining. That individual just might be a good creative inspiration for you, and someone whom you also wish to generously befriend.

---If you meet a person who almost never poses any questions to you, you might want to reflect a bit on the questions you yourself have posed to that individual. Is it possible that his own "no questions" style toward yourself indicates he does not like the questions you have yourself asked him, and he therefore seeks to discourage questions altogether in his conversations with you.

---Consider developing a habit of learning each of the favorite hobbies and leading platonic passions of your friends and friendly acquaintances. You will be surprised how often you discover that you have shared hobbies and pastimes and platonic passions with your friend or acquaintance. Those additional shared affinities can greatly enhance your friendship or acquaintanceship.

---If a person calls himself a "friend" of yours but exhibits a repeated intolerance toward your legal and Constitutional right to decide for yourself where you choose to reside within the United States, that individual is not a true friend of yours.

---If a person calls himself a supporter of Freedom of Speech, yet repeatedly exhibits intolerance toward any and all criticism of a cited nation or a cited subculture or a cited individual or a cited institution, that person is not truly freedom-loving.

--Please do not call yourself a friend of someone without being generous in your praise for that individual on a year-round basis.

---Ask yourself what are your leading sources of strong affinity for you in your life. Then, consider establishing a permanent informational file on that one subject in your personal filing cabinet in your residence. You can then derive considerable year-round emotional and intellectual fulfillment from regularly adding newspaper clippings and other applicable factual items to that particular file of yours.

--Whenever you reflect on whether your quality of life is high, you might want to ask yourself questions such as:
(1) Are my shoes comfortable to wear, durable, and orthopedically healthful for me? If so, you will find that your self-confidence, self-esteem, and energy level will benefit greatly from wearing the right pair of shoes, along with the right orthopedically-beneficial insole supports, if needed.
(2) Is my bed comfortable to sleep in, and orthopedically healthful for me, according to orthopedic medical specialists.
(3) Was the motor vehicle I drive specially designed to protect my and my passengers' personal safety in the event of an accident?

---Please do not call yourself a true friend of someone if you knowingly withhold from him or her information he does not currently have that you feel could be potentially life-saving or potentially very beneficial for himself.

---To live successfully and well, a human being should eternally strive to adapt promptly and creatively to changing circumstances in his life.

---Whenever a self-identified personal friend of yours makes a statement that baffles you or pursues conduct that strikes you as being unkind or cruel toward yourself, or a complete mystery to yourself, pretend you are yourself that same individual in order to reflect on all possible motives that individual might have.

For instance: If your self-identified friend repeatedly declines to meet you for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or simply tea and conversation, consider the following possible interpretations of that:

(1) Your self-identified friend is, instead, an acquaintance, and has not yet heard from you an invitation of the type he would feel comfortable saying "yes" to. It is possible he wants you to instead invite him to play racquetball or tennis with him, with dining-out together being something that he possibly engages in only with his mutual-consent friends, romantic partners, relatives, and work associates.

(2) Your self-identified friend is possibly someone who tells lies on a frequent basis. He calls himself a friend of yours because he senses that continued involvement with you could be financially profitable to him or beneficial to him in his career pursuits at some point in the future. If he were to meet with you in person for an actual conversation, he fears that might reveal his own strictly-financial and strictly-career-related motives relating to yourself.

(3) Your self-identified friend has possible harmful or criminal intent toward you, and fears that if he is observed in public with yourself, he will himself later be identified as a possible suspect by some law-enforcement agency if you yourself are victimized by an act of crime at some future date.

(4) Your self-identified friend senses that you might pose a question to him that he fears having to respond to over breakfast, lunch, dinner, or tea.

(5) Your self-identified friend is in fact rejecting you, but is too polite to say that he no longer feels like a friend of yours.

(6) Your self-identified friend senses that you are yourself controversial, and is afraid that if he is seen in public with you, such as if you dine with him inside a restaurant, he will later be victimized by reprisals from the persons who dislike yourself, and who observed him dining with you in that restaurant.

(7) Your self-identified friend senses that his own life is in danger, and that if you were to meet him for dinner inside a restaurant, this might also put your own life in danger as well. This theory might possibly apply if your friend is employed by the CIA, or Central Intelligence Agency; or if your friend is a courageous informant to a law-enforcement agency.

(8) Your self-identified friend is possibly anti-social and hermetic. He enjoys sharing E-mail correspondence with you, but does not want to actually meet in person with yourself or any other human being---particularly not in a public place such as a restaurant, where numerous human beings can be found interacting with one another inside the same place.

(9) Your self-identified friend is medically ill, and fears that if he were to meet with you in public, he might put you or others at risk of each catching his medical disease.

(10) Your friend dislikes restaurants and teahouses, and does not feel proud of his own home. He does not feel that he could offer you first-rate and generous and pleasant hospitality inside his own very modest housing unit during this period.

(11) Your mutual-consent friend feels romantic love or strong physical attraction toward you, and fears that if he or she were to meet with you in a public place, you could detect from his or her own facial expressions and other body language, vocal intonation, revealing slips of the tongue, etc., that he or she currently exhibits possible carnal interest in yourself for which a friendly handshake would not, for that particular person, be an adequate consummation of that interest.

(12) Your self-identified friend has a major inter-personal conflict with you, but is reluctant to directly discuss with you his feelings or impressions about that conflict. He or she prefers instead to meet with persons with whom he does not have any major conflicts.

(13) Your self-identified friend has lost all of his hair since you last met with him in person, and does not want you to find out about his shocking and humiliating baldness.

(14) Your self-identified friend has recently developed hoarseness over a multi-week period, and he is worried that if he were to meet with you in person, this might compel him to share with you private information about his alarming medical problems relating to his recent hoarseness.

(15) Your self-identified friend likes you, but finds it unpleasant to dine with someone (yourself, for instance) who fails to order any alcohol with his own meal. Your self-identified friend feels threatened by your own teetotaling, alcohol-free lifestyle, and prefers to dine out with friends and relatives of his who consume large quantities of alcohol at their meals.

(16) Your self-identified friend is awaiting a trial in a court of law on a criminal-law charge he finds too embarrassing to discuss with you or virtually anyone else. He fears that if he were to meet you for breakfast, lunch, or dinner during this period, he might have a slip of the tongue in which he reveals to you that he is facing a criminal-law charge in a court of law. Your self-identified friend worries that if you find out about that scheduled criminal-law court proceeding for himself, you might fail to keep that information completely confidential. Also, your self-identified friend may fear that you will not want to be his friend anymore, because of the gravity of the criminal-law allegation he is himself facing.

(17) Your self-identified friend senses that you are a writer, and worries that if he says anything intriguing to you over breakfast, lunch, dinner, or tea, the very next day he will read a Blog on the Internet or newspaper article that quotes him verbatim on each of those very sensitive confidential comments he had made to you.

(18) Your self-identified friend is afraid to ask you whether you would object if he were to bring his eight-year-old child along with him when he meets you for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or tea inside a restaurant or teahouse. Rather than ask you if you would object to that, your self-identified friend simply indicates to you that he cannot meet you in a restaurant or teahouse.

(19) Your self-identified friend has recently learned from a doctor that he is himself terminally ill, and he only has five weeks to live. He fears that if he were to meet with you for a meal, you would lose your appetite for your meal if you were to learn from him that he is himself terminally ill.

(20)Your self-identified friend is not pleased with the caliber of any of the restaurants and teahouses in your and his particular town. However, he is too polite to say so. He would like to invite you to meet with him in a restaurant at a nearby city, but finds it awkward to have to explain to you why he is uncomfortable with all of the restaurant-dining options available in your and his own town.

(21) Your self-identified friend likes you, but finds your keen intellect to be very intimidating. That is why he would not feel comfortable about meeting you for a meal during this period. He would find your intellectual acumen to be so overwhelming that he could not possibly enjoy either the meal or the conversation in that circumstance.

(22) Your self-identified friend has turned into a sadomasochist in all aspects of his life, and is himself addicted to sadistic torture of others, including his friends. He declines repeatedly to meet you for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or tea, because he senses that this is one way for him to practice S&M in his strictly-platonic relationship with yourself.

(23) Your self-identified friend feels that you had wronged him significantly in the past, and he declines repeatedly to meet you for a meal in order to then punish you for his cited grievance against yourself.

(24) Your self-identified personal friend is planning to host a surprise party for you, and he needs so many days and weeks in order to himself prepare for that party in your honor, that he does not feel he should spend any time with you during this party-preparation period.

(25) Your self-identified personal friend is actually an individual who has been paid by a third party (that third party possibly being someone who has a sly and sinister intent toward yourself, and who for some cited "reason" was himself or herself permitted by a legal authority in Texas, for instance, to meddle in your own life circumstances) to pursue conduct, while posing as a "friend" of yours, that might significantly undermine your own morale and self-esteem and level of enjoyment of your life, the covertly sinister intent of a third party possibly being to trigger self-destructive conduct by yourself or psychosomatically-induced medical problems for yourself.

(26) Your self-identified personal friend seeks to punish you for not currently being a member of his or her religious or political or social civic-group, and hopes that you will eventually as a last resort join his civic group---even though you are incompatible with its own beliefs and values---in a desperate attempt at increasing your own opportunities for "social" interaction.

(27) Your self-identified personal friend is actually a stalker or some other criminal (a professional illicit-drug dealer or Mafia figure, for instance) who wants to spy on you and attempt to subject you to mental torture, but does not want to meet you in person in a truly friendly and polite context in which he would be accountable for the content of what he says to you.

(28) Your self-identified personal friend is someone who actually hates you and is your enemy, and he fears that if you were to meet with him in person, he would not be able to conceal his hatred of you through his facial expressions and demeanor.

(29) Your self-identified personal friend is someone who wishes to have a covert sexual affair with you, and for that reason does not want to be seen in public with you at any time.

(30) Your self-identified personal friend wants to make you as vulnerable as possible to himself or someone else---such as a significantly older person, or a criminal person of any age, who seeks to subjugate you and "possess" you, for instance---and your self-identified friend is therefore pursuing strategies designed to wear down your own resistance to that ruthless, unethical, dislikable, and sadistic third party.

(31) Your self-identified personal friend secretly subscribes to the view that the only human relationships that matter are sexual relationships. Your self-identified friend cannot justify taking the time to meet with you in person, since that would detract from his romantic pursuits of the various persons with whom he does seek to have carnal relations.

(32) Your self-identified personal "friend" is in fact a serial killer, and you are his most recent targeted victim. Your serial killer "friend" has found in the past that with each such targeted victim, he or she is more likely to "succeed," so to speak, if he first significantly drains the morale and self-esteem of the targeted victim over a multi-week or multi-month period leading up to the day or night of the attempted murder. A cited victim who has been significantly demoralized over a multi-week or multi-month or multi-year period is less likely to successfully defend himself in person against a homicidal physical assault by the serial killer "friend."

(33) Your self-identified personal "friend" is actually someone with harmful intent toward you who is hoping that his baffling and inexplicable conduct toward yourself----his "not at this time" replies to you inevitably prompting you to wonder why he feels like a friend of yours, but is not willing to meet you for lunch at that time--will distract you into having an accident in which you are yourself injured, possibly even sustaining a fatal injury. Your personal friend is hoping that either he or an associate of his, can then receive a generous financial payment as a "beneficiary" from your estate, or from the accident-insurance policy you had at the time of your fatally injurious accident.

(34) Your self-identified "friend" is, in fact, someone who regards his own socioeconomic status as being much loftier than your own, and who looks upon you as being someone whom he might like to hire someday to be a live-in servant or social-secretary residing with himself and his family. He is hopeful in the meantime that if he calls himself a "friend" of yours, you will eventually figure out that he regards it as inappropriate for an upper-class gentleman such as himself to dine with and socialize with a lower-class person---an American cockney, as he may well see you --- such as yourself. It would violate the terms of the unofficial caste system in which he is himself a firm believer.

(35) Your self-identified friend is a fanatical bibliophile who cannot bear the thought of sharing a meal inside a restaurant with someone who does not have a recent book he has just read to cite and discuss in great detail.

(36) Your self-identified friend dreads the prospect of hearing you discuss your political or religious beliefs, or any of your cited critical sociological observations, over lunch. Your self-identified "friend" is very aware of having political and religious and philosophical beliefs that are a world apart from your own.

(37) Your self-identified "friend" has been paid a huge amount of money by a person from your own past whom you regard as being significantly repulsive from a variety of vantage points, the stipulation having been that anyone associating with yourself on the telephone during your lesiuretime must refuse to meet with you in person during his or her leisuretime. "If you are yourself demoralized by that quasi-pariah status to which you are being thereby subjected over a multi-year period, maybe you will then finally, after 10 or 20 years of this torture and persecution of yourself, acquiesce to the demands of the repulsive figure in the background," as the self-identified "friend" might reveal to you, if he were, in fact, willing to consume in your presence a recently-developed truth serum that's actually effective.

(38) Your self-identified "friend" has criticized you repeatedly and on a year-round basis to friends and relatives and associates of his. If he were to then meet you in a public place, he fears that his friends and relatives and associates would accuse him of being a hypocrite. "Why do you meet in person with this individual whom you delight in disparaging and ridiculing to all of your friends and relatives and associates?" your self-identified "friend" might be asked by one of those friends, relatives, or associates of his.

(39) Your self-identified personal friend senses that you yourself have a reputation for yourself being clean-talking, "square," law-enforcement-minded, conscientious, honest, law-abiding, vigilant, crime-deterrence-minded and crime-fighting, as well as "morally straight." If your self-identified friend were to be observed by others associating with you in public, this might cramp his own style as being "liberal" and "cool" and "hip" and "chic" and "mellow" and "tolerant toward everyone and every lifestyle" and "the life of the party."

(40) Your self-identified personal friend is significantly younger than you, and fears that if he were observed by others dining with you in a restaurant, some cynical observer would assume that he or she has turned into a a "slave boy" or "slave girl" of yours----this despite the fact that you yourself have no history of practicing intergenerational exploitation of younger persons, and you definitely are NOT a pederast, and that any such two-person meeting with yourself and that younger person would be strictly mutual-consent in nature, and would also be very honorable and law-abiding and well-intended in nature on your part.

(41) Your self-identified personal friend dreads your table manners, but has been too polite to share that perception of his with you. If you were to meet him for tea, even, he would dread the spectacle of your tea-slurping, since he has strong believes about how tea should, in fact, be sipped in a very genteel manner.

(42) Your self-identified personal friend recently learned that you support a revision of the state law of Texas that would permit court-ordered capital punishment for attempted homicide. He is very uncomfortable with the letters to the editor you have written on that subject, letters you wrote that have been published in two or three general-circulation newspapers in Texas. He senses that he cannot feel comfortable about meeting with you during this particular time period in which he is trying to decide whether he can, in fact, continue to regaard himself as a friend of yours under those circumstances. He prefers to lead a life in which all of his mutual-consent friends oppose court-ordered capital punishment, and he is so adamant about that view of his that he even believes that if Adolph Hitler had somehow been captured alive by the Allies in World War II, Hitler should have merely been incacerated for the remainder of his own life, according to the views of your self-identified "friend" with a dramatically different political and religious ideology from your own.

(43) Your self-identified "friend" is aware of a very domineering and ruthless person meddling in your own life and life circumstances, and your self-identified "friend" feels alienated by that third party. Your self-identified friend feels it would be "morally compromising" to himself, were he to meet with you under those awkward circumstances.

(44) Your self-identified "friend" has learned that you are being cited as the scapegoat or victim of an extensive media propaganda campaign, the name of that media entity possibly even being known by him. He declines to meet you for lunch because he has determined that that media propaganda campaign has undermined your own personal reputation with himself. He considers it more polite toward yourself to not share that impression of his with you.

That media propaganda campaign---a massive and demagogic campaign reminiscent of Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany that is aimed at discrediting yourself in the eyes of others and at thereby discouraging any objections by others to violations of your own privacy rights or violations of your other legal rights by that media entity---was designed by others to coincide with their own unflattering view of yourself as being "narcissistic," "self-absorbed," "barbarian," "treasonous," "quasi-treasonous," "allegedly anti-American,"
"ill-mannered," "rude," "sadistic," "destructive," "callous," "sadomasochistic,"
"unenlightened," "prejudiced," "recklessly individualistic," "eccentric,"
"boorish," "lazy," "incompetent," "deranged," "anachronistic in outlook," "primitive," "vulgar," "Neanderthal," "meek," "subhuman," "similar to an alien from outer space," "so strange as to be labeled as bizarre," "someone who appears to represent the Devil, and who is himself the Devil incarnate," "a walking self-parody," "too laughable to be taken seriously as a human being," "degenerate," "someone so lacking in the power to manipulate other human beings, as everyone else does, that he is utterly helpless and pathetically weak as a human being," "irresponsible," "a person not worthy of mutual-consent and strictly-platonic personal relationships with others," "out of touch with reality," "flippant," "lacking insight," "egomaniacal," "naive," "egocentric," "too stodgy," "lacking a work ethic," "decadent,"
"non-Christian," "atheistic," "agnostic," "depraved," "stupid," "too nice," "too polite," "ignorant," "undesirable," "unattractive," "befuddled and confused, and therefore not appealing to others," "a repressive NARC who reports suspicious incidents to law-enforcement agnencies, and is therefore citedly undesirable and cited as 'excessively authoritarian' for that reason," "someone politically and personally incompatible with one or more cited persons, or one or more cited subcultures," "a misfit," "a pariah," "politically incorrect," "deplorably prejudiced," "someone so odious he is unworthy of having any privacy rights at all," "a threat to society," "a menace to society," "potentially harmful to the national security of this country," "someone perceived as being excessively aggressive," "someone perceived as being excessively passive," "someone perceived as being excessively distrustful of others," "someone possibly capable of possibly and allegedly committing a criminal act of some type at some future date, even though he has no criminal-conviction record at present," "a Gladiator whom everyone likes to see suffer through battles to which he is subjected against his wishes," "the sort of person you would yourself exclude from your own life, whether from a personal standpoint or from a career-related standpoint," "someone whose longstanding celibacy proves his undesirability," "someone not compatible with the television and radio media, and who should be punished on that basis," "someone not entitled to have a life of his own, since his only value as a human being is in the form of the political propoganda and religious propaganda he generates for his adversaries and detractors and opponents," "someone so mired in brainstorming pursuits and trivia that he never attains actual wisdom, and eternally fails to achieve deeper insight of any type," "someone whose legal right to exclude specified persons he has rejected from his own life is not acknowledged by others," "someone greatly disliked by the most influential civic leaders in the city and state where he resides," "someone excessively priggish and prudish," "someone disliked by one or more citedly influential subcultures in the urban area where he currently resides," "someone greatly disliked by a media company in the city where he resides," "someone disliked by one or more influential persons in the city where he resides," "someone who regards himself as religious, but whose personal one-member religion is not acknowledged as being an independent and autonomous religion by anyone else," "someone disliked by each and every one of the law-abiding and honorable attorneys practicing the law in Austin, Texas, which explains why no attorney is ever depicted actually filing any lawsuit in a court of law on his behalf," "someone not mature enough to be taken seriously by others," "someone who is such a failure in the business world in the United States, that he never earns as much as $20,000 per year in gross annual employment-derived income," "a self-righteous single man who is eternally at risk of debauchery or disaster, since his life circumstances are consistently very precarious at all times," "someone incompatible with nearly all of the actors and entertainers and media professionals whom he meets, and who should himself be punished and persecuted on that basis," "someone being punished for having rejected one or more cited individuals from his past who themselves failed to fully acknowledge his own legal and Constitutional right to himself exclude thmselves from his life in every way," or "someone too straight for the community in which he resides, and who should be punished on that basis, according to that media entity incompatible with himself,' or "someone excessively masculine and law-abiding and honest in personal style for the individuals who claim to have a 'personal interest' in him," or "someone too judgmental toward others, and too critical of others," or "someone too radically leftist or too radically conservative to get along well with others," "someone too anti-drug and anti-alcohol himself to fit in well in Austin, Texas," or "someone citedly 'too heterophiliacal' for the "anything-goes" city of Austin, Texas, in which he resides, a self-identified liberal capital city of Texas where honorable persons who always or nearly always prefer the in-person companionship of morally and aesthetically straight, law-abiding heterosexual men and law-abiding heterosexual women, are themselves punished for that platonic qualitative and normative preference of theirs," or "someone too childlike himself for his own legal rights as a single adult gentleman to ever be taken seriously by others," "someone too intellectualized and too cerebral to communicate effectively with others," "a nerd," "someone whose self-identity as being youthful and medically healthy and law-abiding and morally and aesthetically straight, is eternally being mocked and ridiculed and exposed as citedly false by this media entity with its propaganda campaign he did not ask for or seek," or "someone too self-righteous for the capital city of Texas where he resides, which is why various persons in his life circumstances have attempted to lead him astray into law-breaking conduct," or "someone being subjected to a televised battle for personal survival, it being judged to be 'high drama' entertainment for others to observe him then attempting to somehow subsist under those circumstances while attempting to be consistently civil and obedient of the law at all times," or "someone with strong opinions of his own and an outspoken as well as aggressive personal style that are being discouraged on a year-round basis through repeated negative reinforcement strategies that this media entity has somehow been permitted by a government entity in Austin, Texas, to sponsor in his own life, the expectation being that he will himself emerge from it all as a citizen of lamb-like docility whose favorite pet phrases are 'I'm tolerant toward all, of course' and 'that's cool with me', and 'of course I don't report possibly illegal activities I observe to the police anymore.'"

(45) Your self-identified personal "friend" is affiliated with a foreign power that seeks to make your own life and living conditions in the United States as unbearable and miserable and solitudinous for you as possible, so that you will at some future date say "yes" when the national government of that foreign nation publicly grants you political or religious asylum, while that foreign nation's government angrily deploring and denounces the U.S. Government's and American society's alleged violations of your own human and legal rights.

(46) Your self-identified personal "friend" is working very long hours in his career pursuits, but does not want to refer to that problem for himself. He senses it would be ungracious to complain about his feeling "slave-driven" by his employer, so to speak---so slave-driven, in fact, that he eats a sack lunch at his workplace and never has the time to dine out in a restaurant. This may explain why your self-described friend declines to meet you for lunch, for instance, but does not elaborate as to the reason for that choice of his.

(47)Your self-identified personal "friend" is addicted to illicit drugs, and is afraid that if he were to meet you for lunch inside a restaurant, you might observe tell-tale pock marks on his arm. He fears hearing you tell him over lunch that he should seek treatment for his illicit drug addiction, so he instead declines to meet with you.

(48) Your self-identified personal friend has turned into an alcoholic, and has had a series of hangovers that he is unable to adequately conceal when he is observed in public. He wears sunglasses in the hope that this will help to hide evidence of his personal alcohol addiction, but senses that if he met you for lunch in a restaurant, you might ask him to please take off his sunglasses during that conversation in a public place. That traumatic moment for himself, revealing his tell-tale bloodshot eyes to yourself, would be quite humiliating to him, he feels.