“Entitlements are not rights.” That’s what Ron Paul said at the GOP debate in New Hampshire a few weeks ago.
I was cleaning up the table after brunch and only half paying attention to the debate. When he said it, I paused and thought, “He is my man.”
Have I told you I am tired of people with an entitlement attitude? A few years ago, I met a lady who told me, “You know, when I graduated from college, I thought the world owes me. Didn’t you feel the same way?”
I was puzzled. I never felt that way and I didn’t know what she meant by that. After having met such people, now I know what she meant: it’s called entitlement.
I simply don’t understand people who think that they deserve something without trying to get it by themselves. In Japan, getting into a good university is very competitive, so many students go to a second school called “juku” after school, and those “juku” are pretty expensive, too. My parents weren’t too strict on how much I should study and they left it up to me. Since many of my friends in my high school went to “juku,” I kinda wanted to join the club. When I told my parents that I wanted to go to “juku,” my mom told me, “If you can’t pass a test to enroll in a university on your own, you don’t have to go to a university.”
Easy enough. So I decided to study hard on my own and got into a pretty good university. When I look back now, I have a satisfied feeling that I did it on my own. This was how I was raised, and I have always gone after what I wanted on my own.
Often, those with entitlements think they did it on their own when something good happens to them. They don’t think of thanking others. However, when a bad thing happens to them, they immediately blame others or the world. But they don’t look at themselves to see what they might have done wrong. People treat you the way you treat them. So if you don’t give anything, you will not get anything, either.
Life means much more when you achieve something on your own instead of waiting for a society, a world, or a company to take care of you. Life is in your hands, not anyone else’s.
Photo credit: Sean McGrath
