Most adults of my age harbor the premise that we must earn our day's oxygen, that we must pay our rent for taking up room, we must earn our place on life-boat earth. We learned it by osmosis. It was part of the culture we grew up in: Westerns, War movies, Scouting, church.
Most bloggers eventually write a piece bemoaning the entitlement mentality. The entitlement mentality is the opposite of "paying my rent" thinking.
There are a myriad of reasons why the entitlement mentality is winning.
Perhaps one of those reasons is that we, the adults, do not explicitly verbalize that premise. I intend to be very conscious about verbalizing it today.
Pick up a piece of trash? I am paying my rent for a another day on earth.
Help a neighbor with yard work? I am earning my oxygen.
Give a kid a ride to practice? It is the cost of a ticket on life-boat earth.
Someday I will be evicted from this planet.
I cannot prove that there is an afterlife. But if there is, I want to have a sheaf of references attesting to my good character...and to the fact that I always pay my rent on time.
Mortality is a strange thing. Each of us come to the realization that we've pissed away more days than we have left to spend on this earth. That's a sobering realization.
ReplyDeleteWell said, and agree with Paw.
ReplyDeleteWell said, and agree with Paw.
ReplyDelete