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Reader question: Please explain “blow up in your face”, as in this sentence: Do not promise too much or it’ll blow up in your face. My comments: This sounds like a reasonable advice on handling relationships. Are we talking about relationships here? Must be talking about relationships but at any rate, if you promise too much, sooner or later your promises will catch up with you. Sooner rather than later. Sooner rather than later, that is, you’ll find yourself in a situation where you cannot fulfill one of your promises and that will make you look bad, miserable, stupid, etc. In other words, your failed promise will blow up in your face like a soap bubble – or a fire cracker, for that matter, or a hand grenade. To some degree, in short, you’ll get hurt. Let’s take the soap bubble for example to get a feel. We’ve all played with soap water bubbles, haven’t we? First, we pour some water into a bowl; then add a bit of soap (or cleaning power or dish washing liquid or shampoo) into the water. After the soap and water are well mixed, we dip one end of a straw into the water and make soap bubbles by blowing into the straw from the other end. If we’re successful, the bubbles we make are large, light and lasting. They fly in the gentle wind and become colorful by reflection from the sun. They’re beautiful and a lot of fun. Now, suppose the water-soap solution is not well made, say there’s too much water or too much soap, then bubbles won’t come into form or they explode quickly. | 
