Patience is a very dangerous thing.

"Well, just be patient. Hold your tongue." "Just do what they want—why argue?" That all sounds perfectly reasonable. There really is no need to argue. After all, one can die, but one shouldn't argue. Quarreling is bad. Yet any act of accommodation—as the wise Freud wrote—is a little death.

Every time you have to endure something that goes against your inner compass and values, a small part of your personality dies. A small psychological death occurs.

The formula is simple: first comes psychological death, then social death, and finally, biological death. Emotions do not simply vanish; they remain inside us and kill us—even while we smile and speak politely to someone whose ideas, actions, and words are completely at odds with our own.

Yet we find ourselves standing there with a tray and a napkin, smiling obsequiously and nodding in hopes of a tip. Though the "tip" is dubious—it amounts to nothing more than the absence of a quarrel, and the chance to remain a "pleasant person" in the eyes of an unpleasant one. There is usually no other benefit. And the price we pay is terrible.

Every act of accommodation is a little death. Perhaps brain neurons die, or a piece of the soul withers and perishes; regardless, constantly accommodating others and smiling is a dangerous and harmful business. Standing there in a servile posture by the table, waiting for an order...

Diplomacy is something else entirely. It is the science of building relationships on equal terms, achieving mutual benefit, and maintaining peace. Accommodation and passive endurance, however, are dangerous things. We shouldn't do what *they* want if *we* don't want to. And we shouldn't stay silent when we ought to speak up.

Life is precious, you know. You can't buy health with tips. And one shouldn't accommodate... ...to tyrants with inflated egos, but to life itself. To survive, to live, and to bring joy to others through the fruits of one’s labors.

A.V. Kiryanova