How to lose friends and not influence people! (Apologies to Dale Carnegie)

Over the past few weeks quite a few friends have called up to share an angst. They’ve been hurt. They say, left flabbergasted. I told them, they weren’t alone and jumped onto their boat instantaneously.

The ride was down memory lane, the weather was hot and humid, the banks did not beckon any of us, so sailing on, is what we kept doing. At that moment, the breeze of realisation, the happiness of not being alone in that predicament seemed quite refreshing but as the day wore on, it seemed tedious.

So, we decided to uncork some bottles (don’t read us wrong we are the very sober kind), drank up the mixture of self-belief, self-worth and some couldn’t-care-less, seemed unsteady on our feet for just a few moments but then held onto the handrails of our boat called life.

But since our bottles were empty, we winked at each other, smirked some more and decided to put new wine in old bottles. Wasn’t this about doing everything in the reverse order? It sure was!

Thus, our brand of new bottles became the title of my present Blog. The wine was age old, full-bodied and aged with wisdom which we knew would help lose friends and not influence anyone – except to be cited as a bad example.

Here’s our list:
· Do mean things, real fast all the time
· Remember friends only when you need them
· Treat everyone as you want, suiting your time/mood/situation
· Look aghast and play victim when some one pays you back in the 
  same coin
· Experience nonsense but keep quiet when it happens again to
   someone else
· Don’t mean a word o what you say – Thank Goodness, there’s no 
  available instrument to check authenticity of words blurted out 
  except if it’s the police taking your lie-detector test and the world 
  isn’t so lucky!
· Be with friends but talk about yourself
· Always have an opinion on everything, about everyone but 
   never evaluate yourself
· Never listen, just love the sound of your own voice – let narcissism  
   never be out of fashion
· Never mind your own business – forget your nose in everyone else’s
· Finally, never be yourself but bits of everything from Google to Facebook 
  to anything from the virtual world as make-belief – never let the xerox 
  machines get obsolete, for originals can be safely locked up somewhere 

Once our old wine was bottled, we looked for a serene peaceful place to dock our boat. It was amidst the tall trees of simple thought, the thick under-growth of fabulous values and an easily accessible shoreline of happy attitudes. We got off, light-headed, cool and brushed-off the burdens from our shoulders.

It was easier to be ourselves at all time. The world can fool itself; we weren’t interested though.