As we all know, nothing distinguishes your friends from the false like adversity. We’ve all had samples of that. Unwarranted and unwelcome reinforcements of your sad, mad, and/or bad can overwhelm glad for you. It’s as if the false are in cahoots with the devil, in a parody of friends.
I call them KILLJOYS, a subset of humanity I fiercely avoid.
Friends can mediate, intervene to divert the flow of aggravation and pain. True friends help you find the path to glad and gracious acceptance or glorious triumph. Friends help you interpret the vagaries of life with compassion.
Not comparison. Larry and I have experienced this phenom ad nauseum as we’ve shared about our Aussie Zeal trip. From several who’ve been to the same place on God’s earth. While each had professed eagerness to hear, it seems that their motivation was comparison and besting our experience with theirs.
In each instance, they could scarcely wait to interject, “Yes, but …” with negative chutzpah! Holy crap!
Interesting perversion of friendship, me thinks. A phase to be endured, another distinction between false and friend.
Especially when I thrilled at our trip of a lifetime. With robust joy spread across our faces, snippets of enthusiasm emerging from our lips – cherished because of intense times we endured the six months prior…
Larry and I felt eclipsed, a spirit of “we did better than that” or “why didn’t you do —“, which seemed always evoked at the hyper-touristy, daredevil bits – like bungeeing that a Boomer-aged leisure traveler shouldn’t do. There wasn’t the shared joy as we’d longed for, to double the pleasure, memories, and exuberance of exploration and getting away!
I never thought I’d quote or paraphrase Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s indicted and forgotten VP, one of the first fomenters of the present class of political name-calling negativity, but here goes…
The fakes are Nattering Nabobs of Narcissism!
Otherwise known as Killjoys.
Got any in your life, Bunky? “Is that what’s troubling you?”
Let’s kill ’em all, along with the Lawyers, like the Eagles lyrics and Shakespeare’s play, Henry V, said: http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/lets-kill-all-lawyers
Naw, we can’t kill the annoying ones. That would be a sin.
That would bring us down to their level, because the creepy covet they convey is, in addition to their attempt to steal my joy! Crickey, mate!
Read Jesus’ Two and God’s Ten Commandments, as mentioned in Exodus: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+20:1-17
I think I will Exodus, too; getting away from the Killjoys.
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