Entitlement is an interesting, pervasive, debilitating idea that’s handed down and passed around these days. Aspects of our society have devolved and descended into childish, me-first, gossipy, superficial drama telling, and it’s good for no one.
The idea is founded on and linked together with I, me, my, mine mentality. How we compensate for spiritual emptiness and purposeless ambiguity is what presents itself at the forefront of a majority of our interactions, relationships, careers, and most choices we make from defensive, powerless stances, rather than informed, patient, grounded, heart-connected awareness.
Those of us in the mid-twenties to mid-forties age range have a program of a “work hard and you’ll succeed” in the mix, borrowed from parents who grew up in an era where they could either educate themselves and merit a title and better wage, or take a job, train on the job, and stay there for the next thirty to forty years . . . thus also deserving of a title.
There is massive spillover from those kinds of success. For example, you work hard, so you deserve a car, house, travel, and respect from your spouse, children, and community. Or, you have a nicely framed certificate, so you deserve a nicer car, a nicer house, a spouse and a lover on the side, children who wear the latest trends and are blessed with implants, ultra-white teeth, or other artificial enhancements, and the community can adore you from outside the locked gate.
Thus, we live at the edge within one grace note of victimhood, or martyrdom. In this light, the structures we build our lives upon are dependent upon the perpetual belief systems of those around us, who value what we value, in the same, predictable ways that we do. This defines, inevitably, perpetual notions of not enough, and a multitude of competitive distortions and lies, leaving us rushing to go nowhere.
We can’t fulfillingly live through and with expectations. That’s essentially living outside of time (thus there’s seemingly never enough of it), or out of the now, bouncing between hurts, hurdles, or hindrances from the past, or desperations about the future. The more we persistently color our world through the filters of control, persuasion, manipulation, pressure and force, the more it throws it back in our faces. We feel it in our bodies, in our bones, muscles, minds, always tensed, aching, clenched, weary and worn.
Fortunately, we are more than the sum of our perceived parts.
The hard work, as it were, is only to realize the power in submission and surrender. Deserving, if at all necessary, is a given. Meaning, is not in materials and transient constructs, but in the experiences, in moments of discovery, in challenges, in a passionate embrace, in the orgasm of curious delight, in heartbreak, in what if, and what else, and why not . . .
If anything, we are most certainly entitled to the full, terrifying, richness of daring to dive deep; to tap into the knowing; to engage in absolute trust, truth, authenticity and raw vulnerability, should we be so courageous.
Nothing can prepare you for your journey. That’s the point of this place! It’s about expansion, newness, variation, exploration . . . in every breath. There are no ordinary moments.
You’re entitled to your originality, and uniqueness, and deserving of untapped potentiality — so is everyone else.
Love your life,
tb