On deserving more

Recently, I’ve been pondering a lot on the notion of anyone “deserving” something from another person. When I was told I “deserved more” by somebody, I rejected the argument out of hand, countering that no-one deserves anything from anyone. However, in musing on this further, I think that was too simplistic a viewpoint.

There are two sides to the coin here. There is an argument about deserving another person to be a certain way for you (“you deserve someone much better…they’re not good enough for you…” etc), and then the argument about deserving another person to act a certain way with you (“you don’t deserve to be treated like that”).

I still maintain that the concept of one person “deserving” certain characteristics in another is narrow-minded and unfair. Whether we’re talking about friends, significant others, or family members – what makes them “them”, and the decision to embrace or to change that, is something that belongs to them alone. Considerations about how those character traits and personality quirks affect the people around them are certainly important when it comes to negotiating how a relationship works, however it is not the responsibility of the person to be a certain way in order to fit in with the lives and expectations of those around them. We should not be outraged if someone doesn’t fit the bill of how we want them to be, and expect them to change because of it. We don’t have the right to ask that. Imagine if I turned to a friend and said “I don’t want to be friends with someone who isn’t confident and outgoing. I deserve better from you. Change.” Seems ridiculous when you put it that way.

However, when it comes to behaviour that is directed towards us – there I think we do deserve certain things from other people. We deserve basic decency. No, I’m not saying we should all tread on eggshells around each other: simply that we should remember that we are not the only person in the world, and not the only person whose life and happiness is impacted by any situation we find ourselves in. We deserve not to be made to feel small or unimportant by those we care about, and who claim to care about us. Once we have created that social contract with someone – where two people have implicitly or explicitly agreed that they care about each other – we deserve to be considerate of that other person, and have them be considerate of us.

All of that being said, there is still a question of responsibility. Just because we deserve a certain amount of human decency from someone else, that doesn’t mean we’ll get it. Sometimes it will be a straightforward and black & white – it will be so obvious that we’re being screwed over that we’ll run screaming in the other direction. Life isn’t generally that easy though. For the most part, we don’t accept that we’re not being treated as we’d like to be treated. Or we’ll look past it, because we’re convinced that things will get better, or that we might be able to influence and change the other person until they treat us more kindly. (Oh, what arrogant and naïve creatures we are).

In the end, you need to take responsibility for your own sanity and happiness. Yes, people who claim to care about you should be treating you with respect and consideration. But when they don’t, you can’t rely on them to make things better or fix the situation. You have to do that. Take a deep breath and realise that - above all else - if you feel like you deserve better, it’s down to you to change things. To borrow a real-life example here: remember to fit your own oxygen mask before you try to sort out anyone else’s.