Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

Someone shared the image below and ever since I saw it I have been trying to figure out what the problem is. I think this is a very entitled take or someone who is suffering from the Main character syndrome (a term used to describe someone who often sees themselves as the main character in the story, and that everyone should cater to their whims)

Would you get angry if your kid was over at a friend’s house and their parents invited other adults over without checking with you?

This is a very common thing that happens all the time. When we were kids we would go over to a friends place and hang out. If the parents had folks over we would be asked to keep it down or go play outside. I see the same thing with my friend’s kids, the kids play separately and the adults hang out separately. If your kid is at my place and I am taking them over to someone else’s house without telling you then you have full right to get upset. However, if we are at home then you don’t have any right to restrict / control who I have over at *my* place. Who are you to require that I should get your permission to have friends over at my place? If there was a specific person who you don’t want interacting with your kid, you can request that I don’t call them over when your kid is there. However, end of the day it is still my decision to agree or disagree with your request.

‘Feeling Murderous’ because you didn’t get to control someone else’s life and friends is just silly. If you feel so strongly about this then you should get some help to figure out why this is the case because it is not healthy (in my opinion).

Or it could just be that they are worried that their kid will interact with other ‘normal’ adults and realize that what their parent is putting them through is not normal behavior. Another possibility is that the kid is getting abused and they don’t want them telling an adult about it.

Whatever the reason behind the ranting, I feel bad for this person’s kids. Hope they stay safe and are able to get away from such a control-freak.

What do you think? Am I misreading the situation and do you think this kind of demand makes sense?

– Suramya

It is human nature to compare yourself to others even though it might not be the best idea, especially if you are in a relationship. People compare themselves to their partner’s ex’s and the time and I personally don’t understand why you would do that but that is just me. I mean there is a reason their ex is the ex rather than the current boyfriend/girlfriend. If your partner really liked their ex better they wouldn’t have broken up with them in the first place.

The following came up in my Mastodon feed and I am honestly flabbergasted. I don’t know what so say to someone whose entire sense of self worth is based on their Leetcode score of all things?? Seriously? This guy needs to go to therapy to understand why their worth is not linked to their score on an online platform.

“I am jealous of my girlfriend’s ex because he is better at Leetcode than me”

This might sound silly and something we can laugh about & ignore but there are larger implications of this kind of thinking. This person’s entire self-worth is based on their score, so what do you think they will do at work if someone is hired who is a better programmer than they are? They will gate-keep and block that person from performing their work efficiently. If they are in a position where they can impact hiring decisions it is quite possible they would attempt to prevent people who are better than them from getting hired in the first place. In open source communities these kind of folks will prevent new people from joining the project because the new joiner might be better than them at coding. Instead of learning from the new person they would create walls and gates to prevent folks better than them from joining.

Unfortunately for them and the projects they are part of, most people would be better than them in coding because a person with this kind of mentality is not someone open to learning new things and better ways of doing stuff. They would be stuck in their ‘idea’ world’ where they are the best and that is not a recipe to improve. As the famous quote goes “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room“.

Long story short, you need to stop comparing yourself to others. Of course it is good to have healthy competition but feeling like a looser because your Leetcode score is lower is just plain silly.

What do you think?

– Suramya