I Wish that I did Not Wish

 The concrete floor was cold and deep,

Where acid whispers stole my sleep.
Crushed by their lies, my ruined name,
I cursed their blood to bear my shame.

I climbed above the bitter crowd,
My merit quiet, fierce, and proud.
But standing high where clear winds blow,
I watch the heavy traps below.

Their structures crack, their systems bend,
Yet vengeance brings a hollow end.
The ultimate win is looking down,
And wishing mercy on their crown.

The Burden of the Turn

The mind remembers the exact weight of the concrete.

It remembers how the floor felt when the world collapsed, when the whispers started, and when the people who were supposed to be peers turned into executioners.

When a reputation is dismantled by lies, the destruction is not just social; it is visceral. The gossip felt like acid, eating away at years of hard work, dissolving dreams that had been built with honest sweat. The cruelty of that environment—the calculated malice of people who took pleasure in a systematic takedown—bred an anger that was heavy, dark, and absolute.

In the deepest crater of that despair, the mind did what crushed minds do: it looked for leverage against an uneven playing field. It issued a mandate to the universe. Not just a request for survival, but a demand for absolute, generational equilibrium. Let them fall. Let the weight of what they did crush them, and let the shadow of that failure stretch down to their offspring, so they understand the exact math of what they stole from me. It was a prayer born of pure depletion.

Then, the narrative shifted.

The strategy of non-engagement—of focusing strictly on personal execution, objective milestones, and relentless competence—paid off. The ascent was steady. The metrics aligned. True merit proved impossible to replicate, and the professional trajectory normalized into high-impact success. The footing was secure. The view changed.

But the most jarring part of the transition wasn't the arrival at success; it was looking back down.

Seeing those same individuals now—watching the structural cracks in their own lives widen under the pressure of their own incompetence and poor choices—evokes a completely unexpected reaction. The universe, in its slow, mechanical way, is delivering the exact currency that was requested. Their systems are failing. Their long-term prospects are bleaching out.

And looking at them, the successful mind realizes the ultimate paradox: I wish I had never asked for this.

To witness their decline, and the impending fallout on those connected to them, doesn't taste like victory. It tastes like a residue of the old environment. The realization hits with absolute clarity: the desire for their suffering was a product of the trauma they caused, not a reflection of the core self. The heart, despite being dragged through a compromised environment filled with nepotism, fraud, and malice, survived intact. It remains fundamentally decent.

The current success is proof that their standards never became your standards. Watching them stumble confirms that the unequal playing field eventually corrects itself without needing a curse to accelerate it. The final victory isn't that they are losing; it is that you still possess the capacity to wish they weren't.

 

Focus On Your Own Gain

 Navigating a workplace where colleagues hold fraudulent credentials requires strategic detachment. Competing with them is counterproductive, as it legitimizes an uneven playing field. Instead, the most professional and self-preserving approach is to focus on personal excellence, objectively document performance deficits, and allow formal compliance mechanisms to address the systemic issue.

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The corporate landscape is fundamentally built on the premise of meritocracy—the idea that individuals earn their positions through verified qualifications, hard work, and proven capabilities. However, professional realities often challenge this ideal, presenting scenarios that test one’s focus, ethics, and emotional intelligence. A particularly jarring example of this is discovering that a group of colleagues, consisting of multiple generations of a single family, has been hired despite possessing fraudulent credentials and no genuine college education. While the natural human reaction to such institutional oversight is frustration or a desire to compete and prove one's superior merit, the most strategic, professional, and self-preserving response is to refuse to engage in competition altogether. Instead, the focus must shift toward maintaining personal excellence, documenting objective observations, and allowing the truth of their professional background to surface through formal, structural investigations.

Competing with individuals who have falsified their backgrounds is an inherently flawed strategy because it legitimizes an unequal playing field. When a professional engages in rivalries with unqualified peers, they inadvertently lower their own standards to match a fraudulent benchmark. True career growth is measured against industry standards, personal milestones, and objective key performance indicators, not against coworkers who lack the foundational knowledge required for their roles. Engaging in a workplace rivalry with these individuals expends valuable mental energy that could otherwise be directed toward genuine professional development, strategic networking, and high-impact projects. Furthermore, since their positions were likely secured through deception or nepotism rather than merit, standard professional rules of engagement do not apply to them. Attempting to outperform them in a traditional sense is futile, as their standing in the company does not rest on actual performance.

The presence of an entire multi-generational lineage—from parents to children and their offspring—within a single organization raises significant questions regarding company hiring practices, background checks, and internal oversight. It is understandably baffling to witness a systemic failure where human resources and leadership fail to verify basic educational histories and work backgrounds. This dynamic often indicates deeper organizational vulnerabilities, such as severe nepotism, a lack of rigorous compliance protocols, or insular decision-making processes. When an organization allows a single family with fraudulent credentials to permeate its ranks, it creates a compromised work environment. In such environments, trying to expose the fraud through casual workplace gossip or emotional confrontation usually backfires, often painting the whistleblower as envious or uncooperative rather than objective.

Therefore, the appropriate course of action requires a detached, analytical approach centered on formal investigation and accountability. Rather than engaging in personal conflicts, a professional must rely on the company's established compliance mechanisms or external reporting channels. A comprehensive investigation into the family’s credentials and work history is necessary not out of malice, but to protect the organization's operational integrity, legal compliance, and safety. Falsifying credentials can expose a company to severe liability, especially if the roles require licensed expertise or regulatory compliance. By quietly and objectively documenting specific instances of performance deficits, policy violations, or suspicious documentation, a professional can present a fact-based case to internal auditors, human resources, or senior executives who possess the authority to mandate background re-verifications.

In conclusion, encountering a network of unqualified, uneducated colleagues operating on fake credentials is a profound test of professional resilience. Choosing not to give a single mind to competing with them is not an act of surrender; it is a calculated decision to preserve one's dignity, energy, and professional standing. True merit cannot be replicated by a forged certificate, and incompetence eventually reveals itself under operational pressure. By focusing on personal excellence and advocating for a formal, objective investigation into the family's background, an employee upholds the integrity of the profession while ensuring that the organization is held accountable to the standards of fairness and truth.