Giving gifts
Good cheap gifts:
- A box of 200 earplugs
- A Leatherman Squirt / Micra
- A book the person is likely to read and enjoy, like How To Get Rich or Lone Survivor
- Paracord
Honesty
John T Reed on honesty [part-way down the page]:
http://johntreed.com/headline/2011/01/3 ... c-figures/
Quote:Your mom told you to be yourself. That’s easier said than done. Most private persons live their lives like the dun-colored animals of the forest (e.g., squirrels) who survive by blending into the background.
Private persons think the way to be popular is to filter everything they say or do to avoid anyone taking offense. Actually, that may be true on a percentage basis but not on raw numbers. If you avoid ever saying anything that will give offense to anyone, you will avoid being unpopular with anyone, but you will also avoid being known by more than your inner circle of friends and relatives.
To be a public figure, you have to be yourself. Famous people are not people who are loved by all. Rather, they are people who are loved by a lot of people, and that can only happen if you let a lot of people get to know you. The real you. The unique you. Private people spend their whole lives saying “I’m like you” to everyone to be accepted. Boring. Famous people say to the world,
This is who I really am. Take me or leave me.
Does that sort of being-true-to-yourself honesty—“doing it my way”—piss many people off?
Yes.
But it also lets a whole lot of other people form an attachment to you.
A friend is someone who knows all about you and still likes you.
If you refuse to let anyone know all about you—by constantly filtering the real you out—you can never have any true friends, only superficial ones. (I am well aware that not all fans are true friends, although many would be if they knew you more completely.) It’s hard to get excited—one way or the other—about a human who only tries to blend into the background.
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