When you have overstayed your welcome

I have heard people speak of the best time to leave a place or specifically a job. A friend of mine who recently left the office for a job in the UK when accosted by a few misty eyed colleagues (mostly females) with endless remonstrations about how they were going to miss him looked at them and sagaciously delivered what I suspect to be a quote he read somewhere. He said 'it is best to leave while you are still needed'.

I am sure many would agree with him as no one likes to hear words such as 'good riddance' greeting their departure. Would it not anger you more to walk into the Human Resource manager's office waving your resignation later only for her to jump with joy the moment she reads it. Let us face it, while there is a niche for hero status in society for trouble makers, we all want to feel valued.

This is the reason why even the most blatantly obscenely false praise can and is often met with appreciation and even solicited. I remember how as a boy I would do anything my mum asked me if she sprinkled her request with seasonings of praise, whether they be as defying belief as 'my white man,' or as far from the truth as 'the cleverest boy in school' it did not matter.

To this day politicians and royalty employ praise singers to sing their praise... call them Lions when the closest they will come to being lions is in their dreams, extol their virility when they look as tired, ancient and ashen as a ninety year old who dared enter the London Marathon. And they revel in that, if only for a second to fool themselves into infallibility.... what scope we humans have for gullibility.

It is common among political analysts in my country to point (obviously) that what made our first president lose elections was because his advisors were not honest with him. They kept on telling him how popular he was even when just outside his presidential residence raucous riots against him were going on. I do not know what they would say to him, but probably it was something like...

' Mr President burning tires, stoning cars and calling for your removal is a new form of praise your subjects have ingeniously devised. You are a lucky man to be so loved'

He knew they were lying of course (only a fool would believe such garbage), but they had touched a cord that most humanity have failed to resist... the insatiable appetite for praise.

Therefore you will pardon my taking any kind of praise with a pinch of salt. True I like it, but I will by all means manfully, vigorously and if need be ferociously resist it.

Long live the rational man.