Chip on my shoulder

When we put together the high school reunion, we reconnected with long lost friends and tried to catch up with the decades that separated us.

Lots of doctors and lawyers and not forgetting accountants. We even have academics and an associate professor.

For these, their credentials are openly against their names, and when they are announced they command respect.

The respect that their position demands.

For the rest of us. Every day is a battle. Every room we ever walk into is a room full of people we need to win over.

Not just in the group, but every room we ever enter every day.

The constant struggle to jostle the others has over the decades become a way of life for us.

Like the new prisoner who seeks out the biggest, scariest inmate and busts him up, to gain respect, we the uncertified are forced to do this, in the real world.

This is the mother of all innovation and makes us the group with a chip on our shoulder, truly terrifying.

We fight the good fight and get through the corporate gatekeepers and turn the boardroom upside down because underneath it all we are still street fighters in suits.

We can't rest or depend on the security of our credentials. Every fight is a fight to the death.

We fly without a safety harness.
And it makes us unstoppable.

What do you get when an unstoppable object hits an unmovable object.

To all those who are not doctors.
Not lawyers, not accountants.
Not qualified or certified.

To all of us who have had to break down every door, we went through.

I salute you/us all...

M Parak 2017