I was recently talking to some friends and got the feeling that one of them has something against me. I am not sure what that might be, but I just got that feeling.

That friend's smiles were brief and seemed fake, the eyes were shifting around and the body was wiggling around in the seat. Some of you are probably thinking that I am paranoid right now. While that is one of many possibilities, I can only hope that is not the case.

Therefore, thinking myself rational and sane, I went on to wonder: Maybe I said something that didn't bode well at some point and those words created a wound somewhere? Maybe I said something to someone else who changed it and passed it along, making an arrow out of an olive branch. Wounds between friends are like pimples, I prefer to squeeze them and get it over with. Sometimes they bleeds and go away, other times a big scar is left behind. The worst ones are when everyone gets hurt and nothing happens. It is the suspense that kills me.

I really prefer people to just tell me when I say something ignorant, insensitive or demeaning (or all of the above). I sometimes do and usually don't mean harm to anyone. I have a bad habit of expressing my personal opinions, which are generally better kept to one's own thoughts.

I think it was Martin Luther that said bad thoughts are like birds. We can't stop them from flying around and about, but we can prevent them from making a nest in our hair.

That is something worth pondering the next time you start dreaming up ways to take care of so-and-so. It is one thing to have that thought fly by, it is another to catch it and nurture it into a full-blown mental movie. It isn't healthy.

Strangers insult people all the time. That's what strangers do. Friends are not supposed to do that, but they do it anyway. The difference is that we are supposed to feel like our relationship with that person is important enough to repair and heal.

A relationship with a stranger is not something we really care about. I have had numerous strangers behave in rude and uncalled for ways, but that never has really bothered me the way it does some people. Once in the store I was looking over a woman's head at some products, trying to read a box. "Why don't you take a picture, it'll last longer," she offered snidely. I just smiled and kept on doing my shopping, ignoring her. She finally left in a huff, more upset because she found out I was really ignoring her all along. However, when a friend fires at close range, it always hits home. Mainly because we have bared a portion of our inner selves to our friends and find ourselves uncomfortable at the slightest inkling of displeasure. We don't open our hearts for a knife.

The ego is such a fragile thing. When we show our 'true' selves to others that we care about and they don't seem to approve, the first reaction is to withdraw into our shell.

Of course, when you top 200 pounds, it is best to not try it. Your shell might not be up for it.

Seriously though, opening up to others is not something that comes easily to me. I sometimes even have a hard time with that level of intimacy, even in my own family. It isn't a lack of love or trust, it is just easier to be private. Easier isn't always best.

I have found that I sometimes feel that it seems much easier in life to have no more than extemporaneous contact with other people and not have to deal with their problems and insecurities — or my own, for that matter. I usually feel that way when I have an unexpected conflict.

However, I soon find myself laughing and smiling with my friends again, all the former misgivings about people forgotten.

A social crisis is somehow like that. It comes and seems like it was always there, then goes and seems like it was never there at all. I always think of a line from William Jefferson Clinton in times of woe.

There was a guy who knew how the bottom could drop out of your social lie, I mean life, in a hurry. He said that the best thing we can do to support our friends and confound our enemies is show up every day. I have found that it is much harder to hate someone in their presence than in their absence, so that is how I handle things when the going gets tough. When I feel like everyone is down on me and things aren't going well, I try to keep on doing my own thing.

Likewise, when a friend seems upset, I try to ask and care, but the main thing I do is show up. Some-times the best solution really is just being there.

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