Last night a friend of mine got me mad. Really mad.

He didn’t stand me up.

He didn’t insult me, nor anyone I love.

He didn’t criticize my ideas or opinions on profound social questions, like how the world is evolving.

He didn’t lie to me.

…No, nothing like that.

Something worse: He tried to help me. He indeed shared with me some benevolent advice on what I should do and shouldn’t do to get to X – and X was supposedly an issue for me.

I do have 2 problems here.

•  Problem 1: X isn’t a problem to me. Period.  

After some debatable homemade reasoning of his own, he arrived at X by adding up some assumptions he’d made about me.

Assumption #1 (not verified) + Assumption #2 (Partially wrong) + Assumption #3(Almost right, but not right) + Assumption #4 (Projection from his personal and hurtful experience) = X, a Frankenstein problem he considered was mine, and tried to sell me!

•  Problem 2: Now my...