You know, I actually recorded a video where I said “I am no longer going to talk about the quarantine situation.
There’s nothing more to say, and this is the new normal, so I’m just gonna go back to talking about the things that apply in any situation.
No more about this particular thing that’s going on right now.” But I was not able to post that video, because there’s still more to say, and it seems like I don’t know when we’ll ever get to the point where this really becomes normal, and where we don’t have more things to say about it.
I thought I reached that point already, but it’s just creeping into every corner of our lives and changing so much.
Of course, I can say how the fundamental things of life do not change.
Sure.
But in the way that we’re living lives, that we grew up our whole lives getting used to a certain way, and now we’re learning a new way of facing the world and living in the world, and that’s going to take some time to really get used to.
So what I’m thinking about today is this sense of entitlement, that I’m really- part of my feeling of frustration and my reaction of that it just feels wrong, this situation, is that I kind of- I guess I felt entitled to what I had before.
I mean, I didn’t think of it that way, but I just kind of assumed that this is my life.
And, you know, I have the freedom to go anywhere and meet anyone.
That’s my freedom.
That’s what I grew up with.
I mean, of course, as a kid, yeah you know I learned, I had my parents, that, you know, I can’t- they were, you know, setting the limits around me.
But I always felt that I’m living in a place where I have freedom.
And certainly as an adult, over all my years as an adult, I always felt that I have the freedom to go anywhere that I choose and that I’m able to go, and I can meet anyone that I want, and that’s part of being a citizen, being an adult person in this place.
It’s just so automatic.
It really seems that so many of the things that we consider to be automatic have now changed, but it’s only because I thought it was automatic that it really bugs me and it really hits me with this sense of frustration, because I felt that, I guess, in a way, I deserved it.
I deserve freedom.
I deserve to be able to do whatever I want, because that’s what I’m used to.
And that was just the way it always was.
It’s like the way things normally are is something that it’s very easy to just start to assume that I deserve that.
I expect and deserve for it to continue, maybe forever.
So having all these things that we assume to be completely normal and expected taken away really forces a different mindset.
Because if I continue to think like I am entitled to have all these freedoms and be able to do all these things, if I feel that I deserve that, now every day in this lockdown is an experience of the injustice of how I can’t get what I want, what I deserve.
And clearly, that’s not the best mindset in which to approach life.
And maybe it’s even close to the essence of a bad mindset is when we really think that we deserve something other than what we have.
Not to say we should simply resign to whatever our situation is, but accept that this is our situation at least for now.
So somehow I will need to adjust this mindset and think, well, maybe I’m not entitled to anything.
Maybe I don’t deserve anything.
Nothing is automatically owed to me at all.
And in fact, every little thing that I have is a wonderful gift that is around for- it’s around for today, so I can appreciate it for today, but not expect it to be here forever.
And the same can be said about anything in my life.
So even for now, I guess I can still have a sense of entitlement to, you know, having a home and having the comforts of a home, but nothing is owed to me.
I don’t deserve to automatically get anything.
And, wow, giving that up: it’s not easy to give up that mindset.
But it seems like doing so makes it possible to really appreciate all the things that we do have in this moment.
So I’m gonna work on that.
#entitled #thewaythingswere #entitlement