When I left my old job, I had two options:
go work somewhere else, or team up with someone for a start-up.

I chose the first. Somewhere else.
Some time later I ran into my former boss. Smiling, curious, he asked:
“So, how’s the start-up?”

I told him I didn’t start one.
At that moment in my life, I needed stability, not a new chaos with new name.
He looked at me and said only:
“You disappointed me.”

Back then I didn’t know how to respond.
But I kept turning that sentence over in my mind for years.
And eventually I understood.

It was never about me.
He didn’t ask why.
He didn’t care what I felt, what I lost, what I chose.
He just projected his own desire — a start-up he never dared to pursue —
onto me.

He wanted me to live it for him,
to prove to himself that his dream was valid, that his instincts were right.
His disappointment wasn’t about my path,
but about the path he couldn’t take.

It’s striking how often people don’t actually listen.
They use you as a mirror.
And when the reflection doesn’t match the story they tell themselves,
they make you responsible for their own distortion.

The truth is simple:
some people don’t want you for who you are,
but for what they need to believe about themselves through you.