Do it my way – or take the highway. Have you heard this expression? I meet a lot of this sentiment, and I must say it makes me very confounded.

I get confounded because I have a hard time to understand why anyone would want me to stop doing what I find value in, just because someone else doesn’t see the value in it.

What that someone else is telling me is that they are right – that their way is the only way – and that I am just wasting my time with nonsense and should stop immediately, and start doing ‘the right thing’.

Who are you to tell me what is right for me? I don’t say what is right for you and I can’t see any reason why I would do that.

(This is the grown up me speaking – those who knew me as a youngster, knows this is precisely what I did then. But not anymore since I’ve come to realize this is an attitude that doesn’t serve me at all. Given that what we are talking about lies within the confines of common law and human rights of course.)

I will gladly have a conversation about what I do, and what you do, and figure out how we can complement each other. But I won’t tell you to stop because I don’t see the value in what you do. I might tell you that I can’t see the value in it – but if you want to keep up with whatever it is you are doing, by all means, keep it up!

If I don’t see the value in what you do – why does that mean that there is no value? What that tells me is more that perhaps I haven’t dug deep enough to understand it fully. Or that I am simply not ready to understand what you do. It does not mean that I am right and you are wrong to do what you do. So why are you telling me that I am wrong and should stop what I do?