A long, long time ago in an apartment not too far away… In other words, when I was a kid, in my one moment of unintended glory I accidentally said something clever. And it took me years to understand why my parents thought it to be funny. I said “Don’t pad your own back, it could be dusty.” The previous conversation was obviously about people praising themselves. But I meant what I said quite literally. Padding a dirty back might conjure up armies of dust flakes attacking your own nose. My parents saw a deeper meaning along the lines of “Don’t praise yourself when you just stood around and collected dust.”
My brother was more successful in that area for he came up with a lot of “clever” remarks. He had different and often somewhat strange things he responded to what other people said. I don’t remember too many of those simply because they changed quite often. And most of them were not entirely logical and easy to recall. For a while his standard answer to other peoples body noises was “nineteen”. Don’t ask me why. I have no clue. He did that so often that one time in his absence my mom unconsciously took his place. But in general he did not stick to them long enough for us to get used to them. One thing stuck in my mind though because it was so ridiculously stupid. And yet like with my dusty back there was this unexpected kernel of truth in it. When someone mentioned something along the lines of “that is mine” my brother used to respond “close your eyes and see what is yours”. Of course he was rude. And I am convinced that it was intentional. And yet he was not altogether wrong.
We live in a very wired day and age. More and more companies complain about the fact that their new employees expect a raise just for showing up. Not necessarily for showing up on time. A boss telling an employee to work faster because things pile up and eventually the boss has to do his own and partly the clerks work, just to get the reply “my conscience is clean about the way I work and it is your job to finish what I left undone”. When I hear things like that I feel like from a different planet. I wouldn’t even dare to think that. And why should I? When I am hired to do a job it is nobodies but my responsibility to get it done. If I think it to be impossible I can and should talk to my boss about it. But proactively. I can not wait for the thunderclouds to gather over my head. But where does that entitlement come from? I think one origin is our culture of giving out gold medals for participation.
From all the computer animated movies out there I love the Pixar movies the best. They are made with love for details and even Toy Story, the first fully computer animated feature film, is still very enjoyable. Even from a technical standpoint. But what I love the most is the fact that they don’t follow Hollywood’s pattern of protagonist has an unreachable dream but by overcoming all obstacles he will finally achieve it. (Lightning McQueen from cars for example never wins a trophy on screen. In Cars 1 he finds something far better then his dream of becoming the first rookie to win the piston cup.) That makes way for some great dialogs. There is for example a great scene in the movie “The Incredibles” (2004). The superhero-dad just fought crime when he was not supposed to because they are in hiding and now he has to discuss that with his superhero-wife. She disproves his actions because they could uproot the family. Again. And she mentions their superhero-son who has the ability to run extremely fast. And this is how it goes.
Helen: Tell me you haven’t been listening to the police scanner again
Bob: Look, I performed a public service. You act like that’s a bad thing.
Helen: It is a bad thing, Bob! Uprooting our family *again* so that you can relive the glory days is a very bad thing!
Bob: [Defensively] Reliving the glory days is better than pretending they never happened!
Helen: Yes! They happened, but this; our family, is what’s happening now, Bob! And you’re missing this! I can’t believe you don’t want to go to your own son’s graduation!
Bob: It’s not a graduation. He is moving from the fourth grade to the fifth grade.
Helen: It’s a ceremony!
Bob: It’s psychotic! People keep coming up with new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional…
Helen: This is not about you, Bob. This is about Dash.
Bob: You want to do something for Dash? Well, let him actually compete! Let him go out for sports!
Helen: I will not be made the enemy here! You *know* why we can’t!
Bob: Because he’d be *GREAT*!
You might guess that my favorite sentence is “People keep coming up with new ways to celebrate mediocrity!” Because that is basically the source of the entitlement we are facing in youth today.
But I know, just celebrating the great creates other problems. Everything would become performance driven focusing on a few goals. So with giving everybody a medal we try to tell them that everybody is loved and equally valued. That is in principle a good thing. But I see the need to teach our kids that being valued does not come with a set of rights. And even though all of us could come up with at least several situations where we do have rights (as a costumer, in traffic, a phone call and a lawyer…) we have to understand that those rights are not rooted within us or just simply because we are. These rights are granted. By laws, by relationships, by love, by sacrifice.
One of the things that America did not import from the old country was nobility. And for a good reason. We, the ordinary citizens, frown upon the idea of someone having rights just because he was born in the right family. But entitlement does the same on a far bigger scale. We assume we have rights just because we are. That is what it means to be entitled. To have a title like a baron or a count. Nobles did not earn it. They were born into it. But this is how we feel. Or how I feel at least. Because checking my own thoughts I come to the conclusion that only I have rights and everybody else has to obey them. Unfortunately everybody thinks the same about himself. When actually here lies the truth in my brothers nonsense. For when someone says “It is my right…” we should answer “Close your eyes and you will see what you are entitled to.” And yet we also should remember the same thing when we close our eyes.
