As my body and mind ages, my eyesight has got sharper

Ageing.

Something we are all prone to, just like death.

I hit 60 years old on the 4th April of this year and marvel sometimes at how my younger self saw 30 year olds as ancient. I'm sprightly and in great physical condition for my age - not much upper body strength, admittedly, with arms that are puny. Strong legs and thighs, flat stomach, though.

Mentally, I'm still very sharp and I put that down to being teetotal for over 8 years. My hearing capacity has waned from the days I could tell if someone was unwrapping sweets or chewing gum in classrooms (I was an English teacher) but the most remarkable aspect is the improvement in my eyesight.

It has got sharper and sharper in recent years, to a point where I can see through people with Steve Austin levels of bionic vision.

That sharpness has not come from eating carrots, or supplements, but from learning.

Reading about the psychology of people, learning about behaviour disorders and watching numerous TikToks, Meta Reels and YouTube videos about humans.

One thing I've learned, especially in the past two years, is that so many people wear masks.

They wear a mask to disguise their true intentions, their private behaviour patterns, their actual deep-seated character.

There are a lot of wrong uns in business and life and I've become pretty skilled at spotting them.

You don't listen to words - you watch actions

Now there is an old truism about actions speaking louder than words, and it's perfect advice. But watching actions goes further than that - it's observing micro-expressions and micro-behaviours. It's realising that the words coming out of the person you're dealing with clash with their actions.

I've been bitten repeatedly during my career, freelance, personal and professional life, by scorpions and snakes, masquerading as loyal labradors or border collies (I have a BC).

I used to expend energy asking why they behaved in such a way, when time would have better spent in deleting them from my life. That's what I do now. I don't chase after a serpent with an email, a call, a face-to-face conversation to get some closure, to garner an apology, to seek some solution.

No.

I leave them where they are.

The disrespect is the closure, the abuse is the closure, the endemic unreliability, the poor timekeeping, the dishonesty is the closure.

I've had around 10 examples of very stark examples of people wearing masks in recent years - people who've openly abused me, who were friends on here and other social platforms, people I've mingled with socially.

The one who phoned me the day after a volley of nasty personal abuse claiming he was tired - and blaming that on his invective against me.

Another who repeatedly let me down on social occasions, or planned holidays, making frankly preposterous excuses for his repeated failures to act on a commitment.

Once is forgivable.

Twice is a pattern.

Three times and you're deleted from my life.

May seem harsh to you, as it does to others who've commented on my brutal (though private) discards.

My point is this though - very few people have an Ebenezer Scrooge, leaning out of a window, personality conversion.

When somebody shows you who they are, when the mask slips, when the bile surfaces, believe them.

I've learned not to call them out, seek atonement from them, neither forgiving nor forgetting. Their consequence is no longer eating at my table.

I delete from my life.

When your gut tells you, or your vision shows you, that this person is performing an elaborate act of generosity, kindness, friendship and yet they treat others and you like shit, it's time to bail.

Find those who are consistent, kind, supportive and get rid of those who put on a gregarious, superficial front of niceness when really they're anything but.

Drastic advice, you may think, to cut these people from your life, but my almost 60 year old vision tells me now that people don't change, they just play act to those who can't see.

I've got half dozen other real friends and more whose intentions and actions I can totally trust.