Observations

1. I have learned in more than 20 years of observing military families that it is not the act of service that shapes the life of the children of those who serve, but rather the character of the person doing the service.

2. If I come to you acting/feeling needy, it is because I feel like there might be something fundamentally wrong with how I interact with the world.  I don't need judgment.  I need you to reassure me that I am normal and/or show me a more effective way.

3. Socializing by financial strata isolates from some pretty amazing people, and makes you see things through a very small window that blinds you to most of the rest of the world's perspective.

4. There are crappy people at every level.  More money will not make them better people, and less money does not make them worse people.  More money means they have more leverage to hide who they really are at heart, so they can manipulate more readily.

5. People say things as platitudes, but their words mean nothing, and often are more painful to the hearer than to have said nothing at all.  Silence truly is golden.  Or, as my mother used to say, "Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it."

6.  People are lazy on social media.  Very few research anything.  Most just repost without checking veracity, and often react without thinking through what they have read, not looking at it from any perspective besides their own.