How many times do you see someone do something which completely baffles you, and yet to them it’s as normal and natural as anything else they do. They’ve walked a different path in life, and it lead them to that moment. From your point of view they are wrong. From their’s, they are right.
Years ago, long before the founding of the olilolo empire, I was working at the head office for a group of retail shops. It was while I was there that I realised something which is so obvious to some people, but so alien to others: Life is all about perspective.
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My boss walked up to the door and kicked it’s arse in. The sound of shattering wood brought people running from all over the office. As he wandered off nonchalantly, I realised this wasn’t the first time I had seem him kick in a door. The thought worried me.
Even more years into the past said boss; boss of the whole, bloody organisation; had accidentally locked himself out of his office. As people scrambled to find a locksmith, he walked up to it calmly, kicked in the door, then sat behind his desk and started working as if nothing had happened. I was new to the company at that stage, and as I tried to make sense of what I had just witnessed my brain started screaming at me, ‘What have you gotten youself in to? Run you idiot, run!’. Despite the shock on everyone’s face, and the totally unsurprised boredom of the older staff members, the event was never mentioned again and it soon faded from my memory.
Five years later I was witnessing the same situation again: A locked door and a ‘kicky’ boss who couldn’t seem to keep his legs under control.
I stood there dazed, momentarily reliving the past as buried memories came flooding back. I forced myself to snap out of it. I was surprised it had happened again, shocked in fact, but after a time I realised this one fact; “Shit, I’d like to kick in a door”.
We’ve all seen it on TV, but how often do we get the chance, and I bet that’s what he was thinking too. “Fuck it! I’m the boss, it’s my door, and it’s going down.”
As I looked around at my fellow employees, their mouths agape and eyes full of fear, it was then I realised everything in life was about perspective. They thought their boss had just lost his frigging mind and had decided to start lashing out violently at things around him.
They were wrong.
He wasn’t a crazed lunatic bent on property destruction, a violent man ready to explode at a moments notice or even a stressed soul who just couldn’t take the 21st century any longer and was would later that night be trying to desperately obtain a weapons licence to ‘show them all’.
No, he was a wacky guy, fulfilling a childhood dream to be an action star and show everyone who’s boss. I bet he even thought he’d earnt a little respect that day too.
I guess he was wrong too.
So really the moral of this go-nowhere story is, next time you see someone talking to themselves and lashing out at people and random objects, think: Is this a crazed-loon ready to stab me for my go-card? Or another business leader living the dream.
Hello Aaron,
I have a minor matter concerning your old website. Can I get in contact with you in some way?
Sincerely,
A