Further Thoughts on "Deserve"

If you think about it, to claim you deserve something from someone (who is withholding it, and who has the ability to continue withholding it), is to put that person above you.

Personally, I gratefully accept all gifts given freely - from the hand of random chance or other philanthropists. It is because I don't consider it "deserved" that I am able to be honestly grateful! It is also because I don't put myself in the position of the groveling supplicant.

There is a big difference, here, between a person feeling that they deserve things no one has committed to give them, and the simple honoring of agreements made. When an agreement with me is honored, it is because the agreement was made - not because I deserved the agreement to be made. At work, they don't pay me because I deserve it. Maybe they'd fire me, if they felt I deserved to be fired! But as long as I'm there at the job, they pay me because that is what they've agreed to do.

If I were to claim I deserved their money, it would be the same thing as saying that they deserve my time. Which is preposterous. We've each agreed to hold our own nose on that exchange, for the sake of expediency. That's all.

But a gift is something different. And no matter how much you think you deserve it - if the person you think you deserve it from can either give it or withhold it at whim - then it's a gift. Okay? What is wrong with simple gratitude? Why should you think you deserve a thing that another person has not committed to give, and that they are free to withhold? How does it help you to put yourself in that position? If they don't have to give it to you - then it's a gift!

Now, if it is just the fulfillment of an earlier agreement, then by all means, treat it cool like a business deal. But if that's how you run your personal life - transactions, debts logged, things owed - then what an empty shell your personal life must be. How can you be owed anything just for being who you are and doing the best you can? Was everything you ever gave anyone in your life merely a loan? For which you expect - you demand, you deserve return? Is that what your life has been? Every good done - another entry in the other person's debt column! Is that what all the good of your life has been?

Or was it a gift given freely?

When someone gives me something, I can feel surprise and gratitude over a gift given freely. I did not deserve it. It wasn't owed. The gift is given - I get something unexpected! That's a happy thing. But suppose I thought I deserved it: would I have received it with hauteur and irritation that it took so long, for me to simply get what I deserve? Or would I have measured it against the balance of what I thought I deserved and found it insufficient? People with a keen sense of entitlement must never enjoy getting anything!

Now, maybe the person giving it felt I'd earned it. Maybe to the giver, it was a gratuity. Okay. But that doesn't bother me either - because it was a gift given freely, no matter how the giver saw the exchange. They needn't have given it to me. They didn't agree to give it to me. And it certainly was never a case of me, the supplicant, praying my case to the person I've put above me, to give me what I deserve from them.

I mean heck. Who needs that? Who can even enjoy it, when that transaction comes through? Are you really so deeply in that person's power that you need to set yourself up for resentment, even when good things happen?

What good is what you think you deserve? If you don't get it, you grumble and whine like a bitch about it. If you do get it - "big deal!", "about time!" - at best, you take it as your due. Precious little satisfaction there.

Be bigger than that. Live your life as a gift given freely. Let the good that comes back to you be as unexpected, undeserved, uncounted as the good you put forth. Honor the agreements you make, and hold others to their agreements - but when it comes to just doing good, treat each and all as your equal, and all gifts as free.

If you gave someone good, let it be a gift. If someone gives you good, it is not in repayment. Let it be a gift. Don't put others above you, such that your happiness depends on what you say they deserve to give. Be bigger than that.

You deserve it!