Entitlement

"I deserve it."

With these words, I was recently told (I think) that I'd crossed a line that I really hadn't meant to cross. But that simple declaration sent me back over many many years to the difficult and dark days of dealing with my daughter through the swirling, crazy, uncertain years of her adolecesence, when a psychiatrist first explained to me the notion of "entitlement" and how it contributed to much pathological psychology. Ever since that time, I've been wary when I hear myself say to myself, "I deserve it."

I hope, I've learned a little bit in the 50 years I've spent on the planet. I can be dense, but I try to catch some of the lessons that have come my way. If there's one thing I'm pretty sure of, it is that I don't "deserve" most of what I end up with in my life, good or bad.

I'm a good person. I really do think that's true. I try to do good stuff, and I try to operate with integrity as far as I know how to do that. I treat the people who come into my orbit with respect and openness and honesty, and I hope for the same from them. Sometimes, I get that. However, I've learned that some people like me, and others don't and whichever way that goes, it doesn't really mean anything much about me. Or change the way I ought to operate in the world. If that reality impinges on my well-being, I need to react appropriately, but otherwise, it is something that is kind of incidental, like the weather.

I have had my share of joys and I've had a variety of things that have made me sad for periods of time. I celebrate with abandon when the situation calls for it and I mourn and grieve prodigiously when things go badly. I allow myself to feel whatever it is I feel, and I try not to filter that, and I try not to apologize too much. I don't figure the good stuff comes as a reward for anything I did generally, and I also try not to blame anybody for the bad stuff.

I do sort of subscribe to a kind of reincarnationist view of the universe, and I suppose there's an element of "karmic" balance to my cosmology, but I'm really not somebody who figures that there is some Divine Bookkeeper somewhere toting up the ots for each of us. We each learn what it is that there is to learn, and if the lessons aren't mastered in this go round, well, no harm -- school's open next time.

So when it comes to that business of "I deserve it," I'm kind of leery. Do I deserve to be "happy?" Do we deserve to have the years together that I so adamantly wish for? Do I deserve some weight of joys to make up for the years of drudgery and sorrow that preceded this? I wish it worked that way, but I just don't think so.

There is somekind of grace to these moments. Some kind of totally unearned and undeserved simplicity in these unexpected and unhoped for days and weeks. The fact is that I had long ago given up on this reality -- quit believing in its very existence, become convinced that it was a dream that could not come to life in this life. So, no, I don't believe in entitlement. I do believe in the precious miracle of US, and I am incredibly gifted in its reality in my life.

swan