Entitlement

One of the omnipresent features of earthly life that completely mystifies me is entitlement. It's such a simple idea, yet it showers strange behavior that can only be focused through this lens. People deserve. Or so it seems.

I have to take it on faith, because I don't. Normally, I can empathize with the intentions behind bad behavior, having managed a million people for a decade, acquiring a pretty authoritative sense of where humans are coming from and how they got that way. But entitlement still knocks me for a loop, because I never had a taste of it. My entire life, all 63 years, served to broadcast the clear and unwavering cosmic notice that I am entitled to nothing. I don't deserve.

This sounds bitter and self-pitying, I know. But it's neither. Hang on, you'll see where I'm coming from in a moment.

The lesson I was taught was to expect nothing. Not even a do-over, or forgiveness, or credit for past performance, or even mild benefit of the doubt. Everything, it was impressed on me by worldly experience, must be earned (while withstanding a stiff headwind).

This voice is not my voice, by the way. I'm putting it on. This was a writing exercise and thought experiment wherein I adopt the perspective that there was some other alternative I was deprived of. And this is a completely alien perspective. So it's fake for me. How'm I doing?

I'm not deprived because I never saw any other world. So I've adapted, stabilizing in the world as-is, and am perfectly okay with it. I've learned to be stout-hearted in headwinds. A neat trick! I'm grateful!

I follow the rules of engagement as they appear to be set out before me. And as I do, I can't help endlessly remarking upon the fact that all the free oxygen and sunlight are super-nice! I notice this way more than other people, because they're entitled to so much more that the sunlight and oxygen seem puny, while to me they're mind-bogglingly generous freebies. Gimmes.

I really enjoy the oxygen and sunlight. And the trees! And, with a bit more labor and initiative, restaurants and music to seek out and enjoy. And I'll be goddamned if that isn't enough to hang a life on right there. The rest is gravy frosting.

The Portuguese are much less entitled. And this brings into much brighter focus the entitlement of Americans, some of whom stride these corridors like colossi. They stand out so starkly that they might as well be made out of neon, and I've come to realize it's their entitlement, infinite on all levels, in all circumstances, to every possible degree. The entitlement is a gushing, drenching galactic fountain.

That's not actually the best metaphor. It's more of a suck than a gush. And I resist that Suck, disappointing them profoundly, as we all do, because no one could possibly slake the entitlement of the average American. It's an unfillable chasm. It's the suckiest suck that ever sucked.

So I don't even try, and have learned to disregard the haughty indignation that meets my maddening nonsolicitude. I am not completely immune to it, however. It does incite one single emotion: envy. I envy the entitled, because the world has plainly taught them something very different from what it's taught me. They've been taught that they Deserve, and that's a lesson that's luxurious, easeful and privileged beyond my imagining.

So when people demand Things and Reactions and Attention and Respect and Admiration and general Obeisance from me (I'm to devour their bullshit and beg for more while they haughtily spurn all manner of real value), it feels like a billionaire asking a poor guy for 20 bucks.

It is infuriating. I'm someone who's cooled most of his infury into mere exasperation, but this one sputtering flame remains. But, mostly, really, it's envy.

---

My problem is that I keep expecting entitlement to look like Mrs. Howell getting all piqued because the waiter put the fish knife on the wrong side of the plate.

That's not how entitlement works in real life.

A story:

I'm in line at a generic Euro kebab joint here in Setúbal run by an Indian guy who makes me secret off-menu Punjabi dishes. Two Americans enter after me. Stiff. Uptight. Uncomfortable. Husband asks me for ordering advice, and I start to tell him, with enthusiasm, about the secret Punjabi menu. He's utterly disinterested, ignoring every word, not even bothering to face in my general direction as I amiably engage with him. He really just wants to know how large the large pizza is; and as for my other bullshit, no thanks, guy, bokay?

On my end, I don't know how big the large pizza is because I'd never order pizza here. I tell him this, but, having proven myself unuseful to his immediate needs, he's out of the conversation, squinting upward at the glaring menu. I have ceased to exist for him. I'm useless.

Fair enough. Not a chowhound! My thing's not for him! No harm, no foul!

But a few beats go by, and he clears his throat and tells me he and his wife are thinking of moving to Setubal. I smile a bit distantly and wish him, sincerely, the best of luck. And, boy, is he pissed.

This wasn't the movie scene he'd expected. First I failed to play my appointed part in his pizza scene, and now I'd once again failed to read my lines properly. I was supposed to graciously welcome him to this little corner of heaven, befriend him, take his hand, and answer questions and show him around and generally play the gracious and helpful expat like in the YouTube videos so he could come away remarking about how EVERYONE'S SO FRIENDLY HERE. I was perfectly polite, but to him I was a churlish shithead refusing to give him his moment. Again. First the pizza, now this.

This tight, ungracious, grim, uninteresting, self-centered little guy had offered absolutely nothing in terms of social interaction. But that was the last thing he had in mind, because he felt he deserved his movie moment from me just because. The notion of earning his way was totally alien for him.

From my perspective, he'd twice contemptuously dismissed me for failing to serve his immediate needs, and had shown contemptuous disinterest in my bullshit (aka helping him eat a profoundly tasty lunch). But my perspective was utterly beside the point.

Anyway, my merely polite well-wishing provoked him into a huff. He was fuming. As I departed with my takeout a few minutes later, I turned back to say goodbye and repeat my best wishes. He and his sourpussed wife glared at me silently. Not a word. I wasn't a human being. At no point in the encounter was I a human being. No personhood, only failed solicitous functionality.

Now that's entitlement!


See also "Why Aunt Marge Can't Be Just Marge"