Priority... Two?

            We're always being told to prioritize. This needs to be done before this, something needs to happen before something else can happen, this person is more important than this person, blah blah blah you know the drill.
    There's only one problem with prioritizing, and that's that someone or something has to be #2. There always has to be a Second Priority. And nobody wants to be #2.
    Everyone wants to be first in line, first on the list, first come and first serve. It's insane. At work, your boss will come to you and say "I need you to do this, this, and this." So you start at the beginning, and eventually the boss will come back and say "Why are doing this, I need you to do this first." After this happens a few times, you get frustrated and blurt out, "In which order do you want these done?" and your boss will answer brilliantly, saying something like "I want them all done at the same time."
    That's a general attitude. And sadly, a lot of us think that way, and it's interesting to see what happens when people prioritize differently from one another. I'll give you an example.
    When I was fresh out of college, I knocked up the girl I was seeing. Originally, we had opted to keep the kid. I started working additional jobs and trying to squirrel away some money, and we decided to have a sit-down with both our families. Her father was career military and born into money. Both sides of the family were against our decision. Her father told me I didn't know how to make his daughter my priority, even though I was working more and saving more money. he said I wasn't making her the priority because I had wanted to keep the baby, and by doing so wasn't thinking about HER.
    Hm. Interesting justification.
    The thing about priority is compromise. Sacrifices have to be made, and you have to accept that maybe your shit is not as important as someone else's. It's even better when you have two people telling you that THEIR shit is more important than the other guy's, because then you get to tell them to duke it out amongst themselves, and THAT makes for good TV. :)