I always had an issue with the word ‘deserve’ in relation to my own needs and wants, but I came to realise that I was conflating it with ‘entitled’. Witnessing a sense of entitlement – both within myself and others – was the actual source of my unease.
Everyone deserves love, respect, access to healthy, nutritious food, access to a safe place to live – the list goes on. But sadly, what we each deserve is not always immediately accessible to all of us, and we cannot simply will these things into existence.
Entitlement is to perceive things in a relative way – to consider yourself, for example, as being more deserving of something than someone else. While to deserve something such as love or a life without fear of harm is universal – a constant rather than a variable.
Entitlement is fuelled in part by a narrative pedalled by some of scarcity – the perception that somehow there is not enough of a particular thing to go around, and so generating a sense of competition and selfishness that can result in a complete disregard for the cost exacted on others.
The nature of the feeling is communicated within the word itself – that it’s bestowed upon you and is somehow innately deserved simply because you fit certain perceived criteria, that sets you apart from others who do not meet these criteria, and so you are more deserving than someone else. But no one person is more deserving of the fundamentals of life than another.
A sense of entitlement is deeply rooted in any colonial or imperialist culture, and has to be one of its most destructive, corrosive, and pernicious elements. It is the foundation of the colonial mindset – a belief in some sort of innate superiority, with one group of people occupying the tip of the hierarchical pyramid, and deemed more deserving of life’s riches than those groups occupying areas beneath.
We can’t prevent a sense of entitlement rearing its ugly head within other people, but should we ever experience it within ourselves, we should try and remember that we are entitled to nothing. We are no better or more deserving of the fundamentals in life than anyone else. If we are fortunate enough to have people who love us, to have the means to keep ourselves safe from harm, to have a fulfilling life, we should be grateful for them and never take them for granted. For sadly, in the world we live in, they can all too easily be taken away from us at any moment.