Entitlement

One night a couple of weeks ago I came home from work late and found my husband in his pajamas watching a tv show on the computer. The first thing I noticed about the house was that that it was messier than I left it when I went to work this morning. Then I looked a little closer and noticed that he hadn’t even laid out the load of laundry like I had asked him. So I changed out of my work clothes and walked to the laundry room. As I walked through the kitchen I realized the dishwasher needed to be unloaded and there were dirty dishes from breakfast and lunch in the sink and on the counter. Sigh.

I went into the laundry room, folded the load of laundry and walked through the living room to put it away. He didn’t even look up from the computer. So what did I do in response? I huffed back into the kitchen to clean and start dinner, banging pots and pans around in the process. Halfway through making dinner he had the audacity to walk in and ask me what was wrong.

Oh yeah. I might have forgotten to mention that it was the only day off he had that week. And being the patient man that he is, he responded with a gentle explanation to my tantrum. After a week filled with two 12-hour clinicals, 18 hours of class time, and two 12-hour shifts at work, he was enjoying his only evening off. Oops.

Our sense of entitlement gets us into trouble sometimes. When we feel entitled to have things our way all the time we end up hurting other people and our relationships suffer. A sense of entitlement is what gets many people into debt also. We feel entitled to spend more than we make because we work hard, we don’t get paid enough, or we don’t get recognized for our work. The list goes on and on.

There are very few things that I think humans really need: basic shelter, clothing, food and water. Anything else other than that is a luxury. But think about all the people around the world, including children, who don’t even have all of the things on that short list. It wouldn’t take much for us to scale back on our “necessities” to ensure that others basics needs were met.

What about you…in what ways do you find yourself feeling entitled? Is there anything you previously felt entitled to that you have gone without to help someone else?