Fire of Life

It is a well-known saying that one cannot choose one's family but one can choose one's friends. Inasmuch as I don't really want to admit it, the veracity of the statement cannot be denied. Bearing that in mind then, I find myself making a few rather... unpleasant choices when it comes to friends.

You see, I have this predilection of ``dropping'' people whom I deem to be rather... useless to some degree or another. I am of course not looking at this from a purely monetary/power perspective, but rather along the base principles of hedonism---is the presence of the person happiness inducing or wrath/distress inducing? If it is of the former, then I suppose it is fine to have him/her around a little longer, but if it is more of the latter, then perhaps I will have less to do with this person.

The axiom that all people are, by nature, good, has been shattered over the course of the last twenty years of my existence. I have placed trust in many people, and have discovered rather painfully that in most of these people, the trust was misplaced. Now, after a third of my predicted life expectancy has passed, I think it is time to prune the list of people whom I trust to something that is more... manageable.

As ironic as it sounds, I am a rather private person in general. Sure, I keep blogs, I talk a lot and do many things out there, but there are enough parts of me that I do not reveal---they stay within me and nowhere else. Now, as the stakes get higher and the old alliances get shifted or shattered, it is time to withdraw ever more from the cacophony that is the world stage.

So, if you claim to be a friend of mine, and yet have not spoken to me in a manner that I deem to be earnest, chances are, you will hear ever increasingly less from me. It is not that I have a grudge against you, it is just that situation dictates me to take a step backwards into reticence and seek a certain balance within myself. Or it could mean that you were an asshole to me in the past---that is something that you ought to know yourself and should you require me to be explicit about it, you probably should never talk to me again.

It is with great hope that the careful management and pruning of this list of... trusted people will rekindle the fire of life that once lived inside me.