Wages of Fear

Many years ago I worked for a guy who was miserable. And I mean, miserable.

He was demeaning and dictatorial.

He loved to make himself look good and by extension, anyone who worked for him look small.

He was curt and rude, condescending and nasty.

I always felt he got off by acting like he had your number.

Well, he didn't have mine. I vowed never to let him ruin my day, or my work.

He seemed to sense my indifference to his indifference, so one day he called me into his office.

"You don't like me, do you," he said.

"No, I don't," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I don't like the way you make other people feel," I answered.

He never fired me, or even berated me. To this day, I don't know what he made of me. He moved on and I moved on.

But I learned something then about how to deal with people who would love to bring us down now. Far be it from me to compare this old boss to terrorist groups, but there is a connection. So bear with me.

Terrorist groups love to intimidate us. They want us nervous. They want us down. They want us worried. They want us sick. They want our number. I say, don't give it to them.

Some people love nothing more than having you wallow in the misery that is their lives. We should do better with our lives.

It's easy to live our lives in fear. It's better to live our lives in hope.

Bad bosses don't get that. Terrorists never want us to see that -- each, I suspect, would kill to force that. But it is up to us to prove that we are bigger than that.

We can look at life and say it's a half-glass. Or we can look at them, and conclude rightly, that they're just half-ass.

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