Happy/Angry Editorial

It took me a while to figure out what exactly gets me happy or angry. I’m a hard to excite person, so coming up with a certain topic was difficult. After much thinking, I finally settled on something I could actually work with.

I am severely annoyed by the sense of entitlement that much of the general population here in the United States (and sometimes the rest of the world) have. I mean, yes, I understand that most people think that they are generally good, and because of that, they deserve good stuff. That’s an easy assumption to make when you’re not out murdering and stealing, but that’s a poor way to go about it. Sure, you may find yourself feeling better when comparing yourself as better than others in regards to being good and deserving a reward, but in reality, it does nothing to benefit you.

There’s a lot of mediocrity out there coming from people, but for some reason, they believe that they deserve to have better than mediocrity come back to them. If you think about it, most people don’t normally do enough “good” to be considered a good person. It seems that a lot of people associate not doing bad things with being a good person.

Now, I don’t want to sound cynical in saying that we deserve nothing. Believe me, it’s not what it seems. I just believe that when you take a lot of the entitlement out of your own life, that you start to have a greater appreciation for things that come to you. You expect the bad, and are surprised by the good, making both a much better experience.

But at the same time, it also makes a bunch of people an extensive amount more rude than necessary. Having worked in customer service, I found myself disgusted at the amount of people who simply would not accept something if it were not the way they wanted it, as I’m sure many other people in that position have done as well. This sense of “I deserve better” without proper justification is poisonous to our society.

Now I can understand if a person wants respect or at least the truth, I have no problem with that. But if someone feels that it’s their God-given right to drive like an A-hole simply because they’ve been having a bad day. And I’m guilty of this too, which annoys me even more. I would like to be able to resist this seemingly natural sense of entitlement, but every so often, when willpower is lacking, it creeps up and tries to take over.

The worst example of entitlement that really sets me off is the fact that it exemplifies itself when in positions of power. Uncle Ben said it best, “with great power, comes great responsibility,” but people seem to not care about that line (yes, it’s from a comic book, but it’s still applicable to real life). Just because you have greater control of things doesn’t mean that you should use it for solely your own benefit. I’m looking at you, congress; stop raising your own income, it’s not going to lead this country anywhere, if anything, it will only worsen the debt with all the money being wasted on attempts to take control of the country. Just because you make the laws doesn’t mean that you deserve to increase your pay.

Now I don’t know a whole lot about politics, but I feel that increase in pay for congress takes away a lot of money that could be well spent toward better things, such as the economy or healthcare. Likewise, we ourselves could be the same way, but it’s just not as simple for us, being that we do not have an excess of money. More or less, I believe that those with more than they need should give to those who have more needs, for the most part, to help them get on their feet. I could go into a whole different discussion about that, but I’m getting off topic.

My point is, while it is important for us to look out for our own interests, we now live in a society that doesn’t tailor to individualism and personal need so much as the need of the whole. It annoys me that people (myself included) think that they deserve to have something when in reality, we deserve the bare minimum (even less, if you go by Christian Theology). But the thing is, we don’t get what we deserve, we get much more, and that’s something more of us (again, myself included) need to be more thankful for.

Remember, there’s a reason why this blog is called Ramblings.



1 comment so far ↓

#1   fuglsang on 11.30.14 at 18:55

It may be called Ramblings, but a bit more focus
would help this quite a bit, Ben.

I like the concept. Parking and driving is probably
the best example of undeserved entitlement I
could come up with. I could do a whole essay on
how people in over-sized death machines think
they can get away with whatever they want.

Your customer service experience could have
been used to better effect, too, I think. You go
past it pretty quickly.

The big thing here is you’re trying to cover too
much ground. Pick one example — maybe two at
a stretch, and focus on it/them. When you try to
do much the essay gets watered down.

Proofread a bit as well.

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