Embarrassment, Entitlement

It was with embarrassment I looked around at our first real home as a married couple.  We had at the beginning what my parents had worked their whole lives for - from modern appliances to cars in the driveway to clothes in the closet and so much more.  It was hard for me to accept this while knowing how much my grandparents and parents suffered in their early married lives.  This is not simply about things but about expectations and desires.  I wanted more than they wanted or so it seemed.

Now that my kids are grown and on their own, they are in my position in some ways and in some ways not.  They are not wealthy and have an abundance of techno toys and indulgences but they are hard workers and have put in sweat and tears to have the things they call their own.  They are like me just as I am like my parents.  We have together labored long and hard to enjoy a few things of this mortal life.

When I hear people complain about how bad they have it, however, I am easily embittered.  Even the needy folks who stand begging at the junctions of the roads I travel have a smart phone.  I well recall a fellow who was hungry and calling my parish from his cell phone while camping out in the woods.  He did not want a bag of food.  He wanted me to order him take out from Dominos and have it delivered to his tent.  He did not have all the stuff I have but he had something I do not think I have -- he had hubris.

So when I hear young folks complain that they cannot afford to marry or have children, I am tempted either to laugh or to cry or both.  It is laughable because I do not know of anyone who can actually afford to marry or have children or who has used this as a legitimate indicator to time when any of these happened.  Sure, some folks say they waited until these things were affordable or within their financial reach but the joke is that while they were saving for either of these, they continued to indulge their appetites for Uber Eats and the best technology money can buy.  They had selective tastes which they were unwilling to abandon or compromise in order to get something else they wanted.  Was it a problem of resources or was the problem competing desires and an unwillingness to compromise?

In my vast old age, I wonder if we have become an entitled society of individuals who feel entitled to have what we want, when we want it and who are not willing to adjust our desires even to achieve other wants.  It sure seems so.  Marriage is less popular today not because people do not want or need this kind of relationship but because so many have decided that it costs them too much of their wants and desires to be married and simply cannot convince themselves it is worth it.  The same is true of having children.  And I am supposed to be supportive of them in their whining?

Entitlement does not necessarily look like designer labels or people who are brand whores.  It can look like sleep pants at Walmart and folks who don't have a car but who have the cost of vehicle tattooed on their skin or pierced in their flesh.  And then those same people insist that I am the conspicuous consumer because I have grandma's china that I refuse to get rid of or a collection of anything.  Really?  It occurs to me that just about anyone under the age of 40 has more digital photos of themselves than all the members of my family had over the span of many generations.  

Entitlement does not necessarily look like an abundance of stuff (at least the kind of things I call stuff).  It can look like food delivered to your door regularly -- cooked and ready to eat.  It can look like paying for the latest iPhone because the previous model simply will not do.  It can look like choosing to be lonely because the cost of companionship is too great.  It can look like insisting that a university shield you from opinions you find distasteful lest you have to tolerate something besides your own opinion.  It can look like a great many things.  

I do not at all suggest that I am immune from it.  I used an outhouse as a child and got water from a pump.  I remember all of it and I certainly also recall telling myself I wanted more.  It is not simply the desire for more than makes you entitled.  It is primarily the idea that the things you want are owed you and that you have a right to whine about it when you do not get all you want.  Again, I am not saying I have not done my share of complaining.  My phone is many generations old.  My electronics are serviceable but not new.  The bulk of the furniture we have had for many, many years.  We have lived in the same house for 33 years.  We have several newer vehicles.  As a culture, it seems that values are shifting and fewer folks want to purchase a house and more are content living in an apartment.  That is fine.  But don't insist you cannot afford to purchase a house.  Maybe you can't or maybe you have simply made other choices.  And maybe you think you are owed something more than should work for it by sacrificing other desires.  My point is not to judge you or for you to judge me -- only that we as a culture could do with a little embarrassment over the riches that we have all come to enjoy and refuse to go without.  More than this, we need to stop placing the problem at the cost of the things we want and start putting it at the things we want--period.  We have got to stop complaining about the high cost of living high and learn a bit more gratitude, humility, and appreciation.  When our embarrassment of riches no longer embarrasses us, we have become an entitled people who love to complain more than we love to give thanks.