Binding the Spirit of False Entitlement
The sun was in no mood to be nice that day and she radiated as much heat as she could onto the earth without a care in the world. Down on the earth’s surface, in one part of a beautiful Nigerian city, stood a woman. She was outside her house and she fidgeted as she paced the scorched lawn.
She was waiting for her daughter to be brought home by the school bus and she checked her wristwatch again. The time was 2:30pm, just like it had been for the last 50 seconds. Unwilling to wait any longer and with a hint of panic that grew as each second passed, she dialled the number of the school office.
While it rang, she wondered what could be wrong. The school closed by 1pm and her daughter was never home later than 1:30. It was a little over an hour since the worst-case scenario and she was worried sick. The phone was answered and after the mother stated her problem and was asked to hold on for a few minutes, she was told that her daughter was in school.
Relief poured through her very soul and after she had caught her breath, she asked why she hadn’t been brought home. The reply was that her daughter had been brought to the gate and after the driver had honked severally to no response, he and the child’s caretaker had taken the child back to school.
The mother was livid. She had been in the house since noon that day and hadn’t heard any sound whatsoever at her gate. Not even once, so what did they mean by severally? In any case, the protocol for such a situation didn’t call for the driver to return the child immediately. Rather, he was to call one of the parents to confirm their whereabouts.
If they really had honked to no response, did they call her phone number? The administrator’s response was vague but the mother didn’t push it. She went over to the school, picked up her daughter, made a call of complaint to the owner of the school and subsequently withdrew her child from the bus service.
Apologies were made by the driver and caretaker but the mother refused to re-enrol her child in the bus service. In her heart, she felt slighted because she knew why they had acted that way.
At the end of the year, it is customary for parents to give gifts of cash and other items to teachers and other workers at the school. The mother had intended to do so at the end of the last year but the economy had gotten steadily worse and she didn’t have spare cash on her.
Her husband was cash-strapped too so they skipped this practice. Simply because they hadn’t received any end-of-year packages, the driver and caretaker began to act coldly and were probably intent on frustrating her. The entitled brats!
She wondered to herself if they forgot that they got paid for their services and that any extra stipend they got was solely at the parents’ discretion.
Entitlement isn’t just a feature of the scenario we just witnessed; it’s a festering sore in present times. It is a sad and sickening situation where people feel they deserve something when in reality, no one is obligated to give them these things.
To be clear, entitlement isn’t always a bad thing. There are some things you are truly entitled to. If you go to a store to purchase items, you are entitled to a bag to put your items in. If you aren’t given a bag, you have the right to demand one. See? True entitlement.
If, on the other hand, while walking out the store, you notice there is no attendant to hold the door open for you and you make a big fuss out of it, you are in the wrong. Nobody is obligated to hold open a door for you at the store. Any store that pays someone to hold doors open while you walk in or walk out is only doing you a courtesy. See? False entitlement.
False entitlement is the reason people expect things to be handed to them; it’s the reason people don’t work hard enough. It’s present in all levels of society, organizations and human interactions. It’s the reason that paid domestic staff see it as their right to be given extra things even when such an arrangement was never agreed to or even discussed. It’s the reason public officials expect their palms to be greased when investors come to them with proposals.
False entitlement is the reason, in some parts of the world, police officers expect law-abiding and tax-paying citizens to give them “something for the weekend”. It’s also the reason why people expect their rich relatives to just wire some millions into their account. It’s the reason people die and their children feel cheated when they don’t get a certain percentage of the inheritance.
In reality, nobody is entitled to any of these things. It is nobody’s duty to give them to you and if they do, they should be considered as bonuses. It is far better to make your way in the world than to expect it to be cleared for you by your forebears. People need to understand: Nobody’s money is yours; not your father’s, not your uncle’s and surely not your husband’s. The same goes for accomplishments.
So before you consider binding the spirit of backwardness, maybe you should first consider binding the spirit of false entitlement.
Originally published at inkinsoluble.wordpress.com on February 17, 2017.
