Beware anyone that seeks to use you only for their own ambitions. Beware anyone that seeks to ignore your wants, your needs, your motivations, because they are inconvenient to their plans. In other words, beware what Adam Smith calls the chess players in life, because they are the most dangerous.
Smith argues that there is a certain kind of person who will treat other people as pieces on a chessboard. They see people as objects to use, and everything would be so easy if people just stayed still.
It's the government official who redraws district boundaries without thinking about the cultural or social issues of the people that actually lived there. It's when a husband tells his wife that she needs to give up her job, or to take this job instead. It's whenever your life is treated like their plan.
Smith argues that these chess players go on to become increasingly furious when others don't play along with their plan. At best, this makes them hard to deal with. They call others irrational, ridiculous, or stubborn simply for having their own lives.
But at worst, these players will try to hammer down other people so they are more ordered. They deny their right to have opinions. They dismiss their needs as unimportant. They plough on in policies and behaviours, not caring at all what other people think.
Beware chess players. Beware anyone that treats you like a pawn to push around. Because you are a person, I am a person, everyone is a person. And the beauty and the messiness of living is that we have to navigate what that actually means.