My mind can get kinda carried away sometimes. Example below.
I was at work today when I saw a ~7 year old girl and her ~9 year old brother walking together. The brother told his sister to do something, and then the sister said, "You're not the boss of me!" in the tone that all ~7 year old girls use when they say "You're not the boss of me!". Then I started thinking.
I thought about the fact that I was at work, and hence I had people who actually were the boss of me, people who have a great deal of control over my financial situation, people who could not only fire me but make it very difficult for me to find a job in the future. And if I tried to tell these people "You're not the boss of me!", then they would likely do exactly that, and I would be pretty screwed.
Then I imagined the ~9 year old brother growing up to be a genius entrepreneur who breaks ground in some revolutionary, billion-dollar industry in his mid-twenties, at which time I would be in my mid-thirties, and maybe I'd have a Master's Degree in some kind of engineering, and the boy's company would be looking for engineers, and so I would find myself working for the boy's company. I'd work hard, climb the corporate ladder and eventually find myself working at the company HQ, where the boy also works as the CEO and owner, and maybe even meet him personally, and see how successful he is, how much money he has, and nice cars, and attractive women, and why don't I have those things, and he's got youth and talent and charisma and money, and the majority of my paycheck is going towards a mortgage I'm slowly realizing I can barely afford, and I have a family to feed and children to send to college and dying parents to look after, and he's already ready to retire with no weight on his shoulders whatsoever. And slowly, this jealousy and bitterness begin to take over my life, and my work performance begins suffering. And the boy, who is actually a fair, intelligent, compassionate boss, calls me into his office one day and asks me what's wrong, and he knows I'm capable of doing better, and I say nothing's wrong because of course I say nothing's wrong, and then he tells me I need to improve my performance, and I say I will but then I don't, and then a few weeks later he calls me in again and says the same thing, and I say the same thing, and nothing happens again.
The third meeting is different. He calls me in and says if I don't start improving, he'll have to start considering termination, which is a lot of syllables to say "fired", and I am furious and desperate and terrified, and I yearn, yearn to tell him, to scream in his face, "You're not the boss of me!", except he actually is, and if I did that I would surely be fired and lose all ability to pay my mortgage and feed my family and survive, so I hold it in and just nod quietly. But inside, I am seething at him, and I realize I loathe my job, have always loathed it, and I complain about my boss nonstop, even though he's been nothing but kind and understanding and merciful, and I should have been fired months ago already, but the only reason I haven't is because he likes my personality or something, and he's even taken me out golfing a couple times. And my hatred and rage begins affecting my family life, and eventually my wife divorces me, and then I get fired, and I end up homeless on the street with nothing to my name, and now, finally, I can go up to anyone in the entire world and tell them "You're not the boss of me!" and be perfectly correct. But I don't want to. I just want a job, and a boss, and a nice salary, and most of all I want my wife and kids back.
So yeah. My mind can get kinda carried away sometimes.
-Me
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