Deserving It
I hear this a lot, I hear people say, "Do this nice thing for yourself, you deserve it." I also hear people validating doing something nice for themselves by telling themselves that they deserve it, such as a night out or a vacation.
Since childhood I have pondered the word "deserve" and what it means beyond what the dictionary tells me. Who determines who deserves what and by what measure? Has it ever been accurate? Why are there people so deserving of good things yet they end up with buckets of crap, while some people, who don't deserve anything remotely good, have so many good things?
It's tantamount to luck. If luck existed, it would be indiscriminate, wouldn't it? There would be no set rules about good luck only going to good people. Besides, who determines what's good? The same dude that determines who deserves what?
How do we now the Dude is right?
As a nomad, believe me when I say, I see an unspoken precedent set when it comes to what good, regular, decent folks, who have made "good" choices think poor people deserve. Of course, they're very clear about what they think poor people don't deserve as well.
So much is simply a matter of perspective, everyone paints a slightly different picture. Some people limit their own color spectrum and brush selection, do you? Some folks paint with their eyes closed and are surprised at the resultant mayhem.
Is your life a wonderful, wild, colorful landscape or a paint by numbers picture of a cartoon bunny chasing its own tail? It boils down to choice, living large is a choice, what it means to live large is also a choice, perspective.
We all choose how we see ourselves as well as how we see others, but with others, perspective is forced, often without all the information. Much of what shapes that is fear.
I see this a lot as a person considered to be "poor" by regular folks. I have to be a bad person who's made bad choices. I must be an alcoholic and a meth user. I HAVE to be, that is the conclusion that puts the ASS into ASSumtion. I have to deserve my poverty, right? I can't be like you, if that were true, you could end up homeless too, and we all know, it could never happen to someone like you. But I am college educated, I've even been a business owner and I have decades of work experience. Still, people separate themselves from what they don't understand with lies and then act surprised that they don't understand the world as well as they thought they did.
Would you agree that all people of any specific class, or in any given tax bracket, are all exactly the same? That they're all just sharing the brain that they keep in a jar by the door? No? As surprising as it may seem, not all poor people are exactly the same either. Do they deserve it? That's not the point, at the end of the day, they're choosing their experience as well, to an extent.
The point is, don't just choose to see your own choices with understanding and compassion. Use that open and clear view for things outside your immediate realm of knowing, that's the only way to expand your understanding of the world.
Expand your own experience and evolve despite the current human devolution. Understanding before jumping to ignorant conclusions is the beginning of that.
It's the difference between understanding and ignorance. It is all a matter of perspective, yet facts are still facts and actions speak louder than words. Act on what you know, not what you think you know and if you don't know, find out, don't assume, it makes an ass out of you. Just you.