The Problem with "Deserving"

Anytime someone tells me "You don't deserve that," I bristle. My shoulders hunch, my voice gets tense and I resist the urge to fight them. "No one deserves anything," I usually answer, if it doesn't sound too rude. What is it about modern society that has us thinking we "deserve" anything?

I wasn't raised in the West, but I find this attitude all over, particularly in American culture. Where did this idea that any of us "deserve" anything even come from?

Assuming we "deserve better" means that something in inherently unfair. You're being treated badly by someone or something, which immediately takes away your power and puts you in the stance of a victim.

We say it about a situation or a person, but either way, "deserving" invokes the idea that we live in a fair and just universe, that has somehow failed to deliver to us what we are entitled to.

The world doesn't owe us anything. To imagine otherwise is self-centered at best, bordering on delusional.

I spent part of my childhood in New Delhi, where the Dalit "untouchable" caste were roundly discriminated against, given the worst jobs and pushed to the margins of society. The rationale? They "deserved" it because of what they'd done in a previous life. That's the kind of cruel logic that "deserving" leads to. 

The woman who cleaned my house when I lived in Bali told me a story about a python slowly swallowing a hapless villager while his neighbors looked on, refusing to help because he must have "deserved it," to be so singled out by the creature.  

I can't count how many times I've heard friends tell other friends, after a breakup, "You deserve better." It's as if their ex-partner has suddenly been found inadequate and now their whole decision to engage in the romance is up for review. Instead of offering comfort, we appeal to their sense of entitlement, as if that will soothe their heartbreak.

"Deserving" creates a false sense of power that doesn't serve us. It tries to rescue us from the feeling of living in a world that we cannot control by creating a fiction about where we stand and what should be ours.

If we win what we want, we tell ourselves it wasn't luck and privilege because we "deserve" it. If we don't, then the world is unfair and we're right to be upset because we "deserved better."

It's an infantile reaction to chaos, a childish attempt to enforce order by screaming at the world that it has to be this way, just because we want it to be so.

We are amazingly blessed to be born at all, especially those of us with enough privilege and resources to have access to the Internet and read things like this online.  

We need to drop this idea of "deserving" anything, accept that the world is unfair, and do our best to be kind to ourselves and others, wherever we find ourselves.

I'm not arguing with the sentiment that we should want more for ourselves than we have already, just taking issue with the idea that we're somehow entitled to it.

Instead of "deserving," I prefer the idea of "worthiness," of each of us being worthy of dignity, protection and love.

We can rest in the idea of worthiness, for ourselves and others, without getting upset when things don't go our way.

We can work on our own sense of worthiness without trying to impose our own random sense of righteousness on the universe.

 It's our innate sense of worthiness that we're trying to get at when we say, "You deserve better." Talking about “deserving” is lazy because it prevents us from feeling the vulnerability of not getting what we want. It's a way to pretend we support someone while failing to do so, because it doesn't allow any space for empathy or to meet others in their disappointment.

Each of us has our own journey towards feeling worthy of receiving what it is we're looking for. We can't get there unless we're allowed to encounter the pain of lack, the heartbreak of things not working out how we wanted.

Instead of telling ourselves we "deserve" it and throwing punches at the universe, let's help each other to build our own knowledge that we are worthy of our dreams, that they are worth the pain, and that we are worthy of supporting each other. 

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