What We Deserve

What does Deserve mean?

Yes, this is going to be another longwinded diatribe about the specific connotations of a word that everyone already understands, so don’t worry if you’re not interested; just move on to another website, and I’ll see you next time.

After all, I don’t deserve your attention, do I?

Already there are some interesting connotations. That simple phrase, “I don’t deserve this,” holds derogatory weight. Regardless of my intent, I come away looking humble, yes, but also self-depreciating. “I don’t deserve your attention” is another way of saying “I’m not good enough to entice you.” “I’m a bad artist, look away, go find something of greater worth to spend your time on.”

I won’t lie, that’s certainly a connotation I would have used in the past, well after my ’teen emo’ phase.

Now, I recognize it’s not my place to tell you where you should find worth. If you find joy and value in my work, I’m glad! If not, that’s fine! I’m not going to try and guilt you into staying out of obligation; if you’re not here because you want to be, I don’t want you here!

Now, as I’ve said before, that’s not conducive to getting likes, subscriptions, and bell-rings. We live in a world where algorithms collate and curate content for us, and we need to either swim in that soup or risk getting ignored completely. I tried swimming with algorithms once, and it didn’t work; my brain just doesn’t work that way.

Do I “deserve” attention?

Think of all the times and ways you’ve heard the word “deserve” used. It’s very similar to the word “earn,” but with a few important differences. Earn, for instance, implies action. You can’t “earn” something unless you do something. You earn money by working, earn muscles by working out, earn a reputation by behaving in a certain way.

Deserving, on the other hand, has a more passive nature. While you certainly can deserve something you earn, you can’t really “earn something you deserve.” Deserving supersedes earning in an interesting way. Deserving implies an ethical imperative; a way the world should be. If you deserve something, not having it is a moral wound.

Now, as a millennial I’ve been told many times by different people that I don’t “deserve” much. Growing up in the 80s meant I got a lot of messaging about people wanting more than they deserve, begging for handouts and civil rights. There was a real push to equate earning and deserving, so much so that even now I see people thinking that if you earn it you deserved it, and you can’t deserve what you don’t earn.¹

More and more, recently, I’ve started to dislike the word deserve. Sure, there are definitely times when the word seems appropriate — we all deserve love and respect, for example — but the problem I have with the word is all the times it’s debatable.

People argue about whether Billionaires deserve their money, for example. There are debates about whether everyone deserves healthcare. A lot of right-wing propaganda is focused on this idea of deserving, namely pointing out the people who don’t.

I’m tired of arguing. It distracts us and we never get anywhere. One of the biggest problems with “deserving” is there is no universal or objective metric. I can say a worker deserves more money, but that’s really only based on feeling.

So I’m going to concede the point. We don’t all deserve healthcare. We don’t all deserve respect or food or love.

I don’t care. I want to live in a world where everyone has it anyway.

I don’t care if you “deserve” respect, I want you to have it. I want you to feel safe and secure in your bodily health. I want you to have someone in your life who is on your side. Many someones. I want you to have a community you feel like a part of, who listens to you, understands you, and supports you through your times of trouble.

Let’s ask this question: how does deserve compare to need? If someone needs something, do they deserve it?

Depends on what “need” means, right? Need always connects to a result. No one just “needs,” they need for. I need food, air, and water to live. I need love, care, and respect to feel whole. I need money to buy a superyacht made out of gold and platinum. If someone deserves the result, then they deserve the need.

So does anyone not deserve to live? What goes into making that decision? By what actions, thoughts, or strokes of fortune can you earn the right to live? By the same token, what actions lose you that right? Everyone will come up with different answers. Some of those answers will be based on old texts or traditional assumptions. Others will come from long introspection, gut instinct, or pleas to authority, whether the authority of math or religion.

I’ve tried to come up with my own answer, many times. Whenever the idea of “deserving” came up, I tried to find the rubric. I tried to figure out both what other people thought and what I thought. Did I deserve an A+ if I didn’t study? Did I deserve to be made fun of? Did that person “get what they deserved?”

Deserve also connects with action, similar to earn, but it places the onus on the observer rather than the subject. If I act, I earn. If I deserve, someone else must act. If you act towards someone in accordance what they deserve, then you are acting properly. Give someone something they don’t deserve, or withhold something they do, and you are behaving morally reprehensibly. In both cases, nothing is being asked of the person who deserves.

This makes deserve an external descriptor; a label that is put on someone, rather than something they can personally adopt. Oh, sure, someone can say they deserve something, much like someone can say they’re an ally, or a good person, or an expert…but in the end, the world doesn’t bend by what label you give yourself. It’s the labels that other people give you that shape you. You can say you deserve something, but if the rest of the world disagrees, then who is right?

What does all this mean? Well, personally, I think it means whether you “deserve” something or not is a distraction. An illusion. It implies that there is a cosmic scoreboard somewhere that tallies up the world and ascribes objective moral checkpoints to our lives. Its a way of guiding behavior towards individuals that society had decided are or are not “worth it.”

I say, screw that noise!

There are people I hate. I hate what they do, what they say, how they’ve affected the world and made things worse for people like me, and people not like me, for that matter. It would be terribly easy to say they deserve something bad to happen to them. You know people like this — people whose obituaries you will read with great delight — and you may feel the same as I. Bad people surely deserve punishment, no?

Let’s not kid ourselves. They don’t deserve anything. I don’t think these people should suffer because of some universally defined justice or because it will address the cosmic balance. I want them to suffer because I hate them. Maybe it’s because they seem to fit into a world I’ve never fit into and I’m bitter. Maybe it’s because I see all the pain they’ve caused and I want vengeance. Maybe it’s corrective and their suffering will bring about a change in their worldview, a recognition of the inherent worth and dignity of every human being, but if it didn’t?

Well, I still want them to feel pain and anguish in accordance with the suffering they have caused, like a karmic penance stare. That’s what I want, not what they deserve.

Of course, this is just how my brain is coming around to viewing the word. As with “normal,” which I ranted about a while ago, your mileage may vary and I certainly am not going to blame anyone for sticking with “deserve.” For me, I’m going to try and keep the word out of my mouth, and see how hard it is. Maybe I’ll find another word that works better for me, or maybe I’ll find it harder to judge people’s actions and needs outside of my own scope.

As some of you may have guessed, this post is my own personal reaction to recent events in the world. Not my first response, naturally, but when I see something horrible, I find myself driven to find a way of improving myself. I don’t know if this is self improvement, but it’s certainly a change.

Whatever you do to take care of yourself in times of struggle, whether self-care or care of others, please do take care.

And above all, scratch the heavens.