Two tollgates of life

Your journey on the road is blocked. You have to pay a toll to proceed. It doesn't matter you are an occasional traveler or someone who crosses it several times a day, you have to cough up the price before your way is unblocked. Few tolls are inexpensive but some are heavy on wallet. 

Similarly, there are two tollgates we cross everyday in life - they are your Manager at your work (assuming you are a office goer) and your wife (assuming you have one) at home. And the tolls are emotional in nature - both inexpensive and expensive energy draw downs.

Both manager and your wife know you well.  They have a clear understanding of what jobs you do well and what you mess up. They monitor you and assess you on a continuous basis. They have legal,  emotional and moral control over you. If both of them want you to put in a better place, you would become a successful person but they won't let it happen. Your success and happiness should include them and forget it if it ignores them. If you become successful without they being part of it, you would outgrow them and they would lose their control over you. So in the best interest of keeping things as they are, they extract emotional toll from you on a regular basis. Someday if you feel successful for some reason and feel happy and light, it will be sooner either your manager or your wife will ensure your feet come back to earth and hit reality.

Your career can't proceed beyond your manager and your happiness at home depends on your wife's mood. Certainly you don't want to lose the job or run home yourself so you compromise, respect the speedbreaker before the toll and fall in line. Life continues to roll as a circle.

If you are smart, there wouldn't be a blog post like this in your life but you would have learnt how to manage these tolls and practiced taking good breaks in between tolls so that you are sufficiently charged with life energy before you hit the toll again. I do read books, go for walks, laugh with friends and anticipate to pay tolls so they become bearable.

If totally unbearable, may be it's time to find another job or if you're financially independent, you can become your own manager. At home, find ways to keep your wife busy,  make sure she has higher problems than managing you. Also convey that your importance is equal in the family. She would get it and may not violate the line of tolerance.

How big are your tolls and how do you manage to pay them?