The Trouble with Entitlement

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Had a bit of an epiphany last night about entitlement. Specifically, the trouble with entitlement and what it leads too. This post is about human beings. The government issues are for different writers out their in the blogosphere.

The trouble with entitlement is it connects directly with a nasty habit called taking things for granted.

In my world, I often hear family and friends decry taking things for granted. Most of the motivation for this comes from all of us getting the unexpected/shocking news of someone dying or someone losing something valuable. The list includes family, friends, health, and much more. You know the old saying around you don’t know what you have until its gone.

I believe taking things for granted has an evil twin, and his name is entitlement. Entitlement is a deadly trap on multiple fronts. The biggest relates to a since that I’m owed something. For example, I was downloading an update to some software last week. In that process, there was a failure. I had to start over. I caught myself saying something like, “this is not supposed to happen, I don’t have time to wait on this.” Humanly speaking, we’ve all been in that situation. The ugly truth is I felt entitled to technology working the way I wanted. So the story goes.

Our words may not utter what is really going on inside, but we do walk around with this idea that:

  • “I’m supposed to have smart, successful children.”
  • “I’m supposed to have a spouse who will not cheat.”
  • “I’m supposed to have health that doesn’t fail.”
  • “I’m supposed to have a career that lasts forever.”
  • “You’re supposed to be there when I need you.”

I’m sure you could add to the above. The truth is we’re not entitled to much. Most of what we have (Life) are gifts. Seems to me, thankfulness should overrule our attitude of entitlement. Imagine what impact that would have on our wellbeing.