Entitlement is a word we are getting more and more familiar with each day, is it just another word for stigmatizing individuality or is it the new age disease we need to stop ourselves from indulging in, in order to be who we aspire to be!
Let me start by saying, individuality is one of the most amazing concepts we ‘as humans’ have came up with, IMO. It has allowed people to be creative, free thinking, self caring and unique in their expressions.
The era where you have to comply to every template of your society is long gone, fortunately. you are who you are, with your beautiful differences an unique imprint.
Knowing our self worth as individuals, our rights and ,our needs is the one of the best things we can do in our short lives. However, with the rise of social media “the great platform that has done so much good to the world as a collective and to deserving individuals”, a new method of marketing has emerged, and it is called “self branding”.
Self branding has become almost inevitable if you want to put your work out there, and 100% inevitable if you want to make fast money.
I have the biggest respect and admiration to all the amazing technologies we have, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking we have lost the ability to be recognized for pure talent, innovation or even hard work.
Self branding do take hard work, I am not about to trash it, the thing is, it shouldn’t be the most important thing of all, it should be the cherry on top. Say I fined a great product, find out the person behind this product is someone interesting. That would be the icing on the cake. On the other hand, the self branding mania has become the whole cake and the good product/input is barely the icing.
People have found out that you can advertise yourself, make yourself look interesting, and then you can sell whatever you can come up with (or hire people to come up with), it doesn’t have to be a good product/content, you will get the money flowing because you have become the brand, you are no longer the brand’s face, you are the brand itself, and this sounds a bit of a disturbing way to practice individuality, as it is merchandising the person itself.
Now, why is this connected to entitlement? If you don’t have the environment that could keep you centered, this loud, raging roar of the self branding movement could get to your head, and it could be morphed into entitled behavior.
The complete focus on individuals for their sheer existence and self promotions rather than for their human worth and their input to the world, has made us all comparing ourselves to these people who became so easily famous for no particular talent or for something anyone do in their daily life.
We used to think people become rich and famous for being an amazing artist, a great thinker, a hardworking business genius, or for giving giving their time and sources for greater good. and that was OK, that motivated teenagers with high ambitions to search for their hidden talent, to study hard, to try small investments, to practice for sports, learn programming, look for an invention ideas… etc.
Now young people are seeing that they can become rich and famous by binge eating in front of the camera, taking lots of selfies or playing pranks on each others.
Again, I am not trying to trash who does that, I am just trying to say it has been the leap we took as a community from individuality and self worth, to entitlement and self branding.
Why entitlement? because when we feel we are entitled to fame and easy money because people just like us are getting it almost effortlessly, we start to believe we are entitled to everything in life with no effort.
- Is it bad to feel entitled to have a good quality of life? Definitely not, that aspiration one of our basic human rights.
- Is it bad to feel entitled to get what we want all the time, effortlessly? Yes, it’s bad, and most of all, it’s bad for you.
Entitled attitude might be annoying for others, the sales/service worker will be annoyed by a highly demanding and not so highly polite customer, the overall community will sniff that act and find it a bit repelling, but these will not be the true damages of entitlement.
The true damage of entitlement will happen within your mind itself, and will take it’s toll on the quality of life you want in the end.
I have noticed a while back that I am being frustrated with everything I do, not content with any of my achievements for the past few years, even though I had reached a place in life I was previously hoping to reach.
As a person who is totally committed to facing my mental and psychological issues with all I have, I started looking for the source of this lack of content.
I found out that I have been crossing the line between knowing my self worth and the feeling entitled, even though I have not acted entitled, not with anyone in my life and I don’t think anyone would see that in me “hopefully”, the feeling have sneaked inside of my head and crippled my happiness, I was conscious enough to not act on it, but not conscious enough to stop it from damaging me internally.
I felt I was entitled to much more things for much less hard work, I felt I was entitled to be acknowledged even though I haven’t done anything remarkable, and it was because I saw people around me getting it all effortlessly.
The decision I took to fight this feeling inside me was almost life saving, saving me from frustration.
You are entitled to love and be loved, you are entitled to be yourself, to have a voice, to have freedom of choice, to have a decent life and be treated with respect of your humanity and to not be subjected to prejudice.
You are entitled to a lot of things, but you are not entitled to treat people based on your mood, you are not entitled to treat people with attitude, you are not entitled to go through life effortlessly to reach the “lifestyle”you think everybody on Instagram has, relax, you are missing nothing, it’s all for advertisement. Your life is satisfying in all it’s magnificent details, with all the people who love you, with all the beauty and uniqueness you posses, stop falling for the lie of that lifestyle we are pushed to believe it’s the only way to live, remember being grateful and count your blessings, not for any reason but your own happiness and satisfaction, go back to the mentality of discovering your hidden talent or having the drive to work hard to reach your goals, self branding money comes with it’s perks and also it’s cost, and believe me, appreciating yourself for who you are is much more satisfying than privilege.
Haya Sharani 