So last night a friend ask me "Why do people think they deserve things"
My initial response was Happiness. Yes i do believe everyone in life deserves to be happy, and being happy means something completely different to every single person. I mean we are here on earth right, and we should be happy, no matter what our background is or our family life, or our current situation. We all deserve the right to be happy.. (in my opinion) I'm not quiet sure that she bought that people DESERVE to be happy, Why do they deserve it..... I know that we were in a drunken rage, and I'm sure i kept repeating my self over and over, I do that sometimes you know.... I told her i would look up the word deserve and see what it really means.
deserve definition
de·serve (di zʉrv′)
transitive verb deserved -·served′, deserving -·serv′·ing
to have a right to because of acts or qualities; be worthy of (reward, punishment, etc.); merit
deserve Synonyms
merit, be worthy of, earn, be deserving, earn as due compensation, lay claim to, have the right to, be given one's due, be entitled to, warrant, justify, rate*, have it coming*.
So back to my ramble... Of course we all deserve that happiness that we all seek.. Happiness means different things, whether it is money or having a roof over your head and food to eat. and yes you do deserve that feeling... Unhappiness does not solve any problems, and I'm not sure what people should tell them selves so they know this.. I think people struggle everyday to find happiness, and to find what happiness really means to them. I think we create our own happiness, and to be happy we must first realize that true and meaningful happiness comes from within our own self.
To be happy you have to believe in your self, to over look our past and things that we have done, that have maybe made us unhappy. I think when you doubt yourself and let these past things take over, you will never find that happiness. Allow the simple things that are in your present life overwhelm the things that are not here... Just believe in yourself and you will be happy.
2 comments:
Earn happiness, or to deserve happiness? “To earn” means that you work at a job and then you are paid, so you have earned something. Similarly, we work at being good and then we earn our happiness. Is that what this is about? Or does it mean that we deserve happiness? “I have a right to be happy. I paid my money and now I have the right to get a good product. If I don’t get that good product, I’ve been cheated.” You could say that we all have a right to be happy, to have a house, and so on. This concept conveys the idea that somebody has given us that right. Did somebody GIVE us the right to be happy, or do we have that right naturally? Why do we have a right to have a good house?
That, then, raises the question: are we accountable for our actions? For instance, in the former communist societies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, everybody had the right to be paid, irrespective of whether they worked well or not, and, consequently, nobody worked well because nobody cared. Is that really what we mean here, that everybody has the right to get paid and have a good house, whether you work or not? If we have the right to be happy, then we do not have to do anything. It follows that a murderer has a right to be happy. Somebody who cheats or robs from the store has the right to do that because he wants to be happy. Does he really have the right to do that?
You may suggest that “the right to be happy” or “the right to have a good living” sounds very much as though somebody had given that right to us, and this doesn’t seem correct. Maybe we can say that everybody has the possibility, the chance, the opportunity to be happy, but we would still have to do something in order to get that happiness. The English expression to be “entitled” to having things fits well here. It is not so much a right. I looked it up in the dictionary, but “Recht” in German implies that somebody gives it to you. In English “entitled” doesn’t imply that somebody gives it to you. Because, for instance, the question can also be applied to the environment: the environment is also entitled to be respected, to be given a good deal. Is “entitled” as strong as right, as Recht?
I think "deserve" is a dangerous fallacy, as the concept of deserving something is clearly a mental construct and only causes excess suffering for those in bad conditions and a dangerous sense of entitlement for those with dumb luck. Ever since I stopped believing in a sense of "deserve," but realizing instead that things just happen, there is no deserving or "fair," I have become a much happier and more fulfilled. Good things and bad things just happen sometimes, therefore I must disagree with this claim for presupposing the condition of "deserve." What about the concept of deserving? If we conclude we deserve the best, what about people in India or Guatemala? How do we reconcile their condition? Do we conclude they do not deserve and somehow, because we were born into a more affluent culture, we do? Perhaps we have a responsibility to live to our potential when we are given much—the saying “To those who have been given much, there is much responsibility.”
Deserving is a concept to me that is not “happiness” specific, it is linear. That is to say that delivering of deserving as an output that is directly proportional to the input. I don’t feel that people should feel that they deserve anything. To me feeling deserving of something whether it is happiness, fortune, good health nice things etc, then all accountatbility of earning those things is exempt. I truly believe that people have the opportunities to be happy, have fortunes, good health, nice things but that does not mean they deserve them. If people deserved these things, we wouldn’t have the poor, the raped the murdered the child that is born unhealthy or disfigured. We do not deserve good and we do not deserve bad, we don’t deserve anything.
I know it's a long one. Im better at written communication than verbal...that is why i txt more often than talk : ) i hope this makes some of my ramblings from last night more clear on my take of deserving.
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