I use my boss to get money and to promote my own career through the success of my projects and my professionalism, to advance my own fortunes.

My boss uses me to accomplish his own job, and to make money from his own superiors.

This goes turn by turn, up the ranks of employees. Each benefits from being used by their superiors, in turn receiving their own benefits. The CEO him or herself uses the whole of the employee body to realize his or her own goals and visions for the company and to promote the products and services he or she has dreamed up — it is a realizing of the potentials they have thought up, turning concept into reality, a wonderful feeling.

And all the way back down the line, his employees, used by him to accomplish his goals, use him in their turn to make money, prove their own worth at their jobs, and promote themselves up through the ranks until they hopefully can achieve the highest level themselves. Everybody wins.

So why does it so often feel wrong?

Maybe because we don’t always do it right. Maybe because it’s a challenging concept to integrate with the rest of our lives. Maybe because we don’t like the idea of using other people, or thinking that they’re doing the same with us.

Whatever the reason, we must own up to it.

It’s not wrong to use the system to better ourselves and our lives. It’s not wrong to use other people — as long as its in an ethical, aboveboard, well-understood way. When you go to work, do your job well, get paid, get recognized, get promoted, your success is not trickery for all that it is on the behalf of using other people. It is plain, simple, honest. There is a good and a bad way to use other people, and to be used.

Don’t be afraid of it; celebrate it. It doesn’t detract from your humanity, it embraces it: we all strive to better ourselves, and our connections and interactions are how we propel one another consistently forward.

If you don’t participate, you’re not helping anyone, and you’re definitely hurting yourself.

So go out there and use people, use them right, use them ethically, and use them to make yourself everything you can be, while letting others use you to do the same. Together we’ll all get farther and make the world a better place as we go.