A Sense of Entitlement

Musing today about the prevalent world view which goes something like, "I deserve this" or "because I work hard I should get to..." or "I make enough money that I deserve..." Now I'm not talking here about the average kid who knows that the world revolves around their every waking moment (like a couple of teenagers in my house) I'm talking about the average adult worldview here a few miles outside Washington, D.C. It is a sense of entitlement that because someone is successful at their given job/career, they should be able to enjoy the "finer things in life". It doesn't matter that those finer things in life come at the expense of someone else; and doesn't provide a younger and more impressionable person a decent role model. As long as it works for me, then it must be ok. A recent survey of college aged kids found that this world view was rampant. Do anything you want to do as long as no one gets hurt (or gets hurt real bad). I find that folks much older than this age are still inhabiting this world and using it to guide their lives. It is one of the reasons that healthcare in America is so out of control. We have the money, we have the technology, therefore we shouldn't have to die until we're darn good and ready. Since we have so much money, we should be able to spend both ours and everyone else's to keep us or our loved ones alive as long as we can. A sense of entitlement...how did we get so far from the need to be equitable and fair and use resources wisely and well? It's been well detailed the long slow demise of organized religion and the loss of community. With these losses, we are fed a steady diet of "just do it" and other mantras which tell us outright that others are less important than us. We are told that our successes are due to our own intellect and energy, not a G-d given gift and a steady diet of grace. We focus on ourselves and we lose focus on everything else. The fact that our GDP is higher than most other nations just puffs us up more. We send short term missionaries to war torn and destroyed areas of the world. This helps us think that we are doing something to help - we pat ourselves on the back. Nothing changes, neither the world nor our worldview. This weekend, seek to shed your sense of entitlement. Find those areas where your vision is a bit fuzzy or you feel you're owed something from someone else. Examine the situation and see if there's another view that is more reasonable and equitable. The more you look in this way, the more you will see. Remember, G-d created each of us in G-d's image and breathed into each of us the breath of life - therefore, all 7 billion of us are G-d's children. Different gifts, same spiritual parent. Peace for the journey, Dan