The Dangers of Deservance

why i stopped believing that i deserve things

The Sacrifice of Cain and Abel (Mariotto Albertinelli, 1510)

Over the past few years, I’ve been turned down from several jobs I desperately wanted.

I’ve racked up more rejections than Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner. They’re all documented on a page in my journal titled ‘Professional Failures’.

Regardless of the time that has passed, reading that page still makes me wince. 

I’ve envisioned a life for almost every job I’ve applied to. How everything would come together, how meaningful the work would be, how happy I would be. The high-rise apartment I’d get with my friends downtown, floor to ceiling windows with a big table to play Euchre. Making more money than anyone in my family ever had—taking the tab at dinner, spontaneously buying my friends gifts, surprising my parents with a vacation. Or sitting in a leather chair in some luxurious oak-laden library in Oxford, legs crossed, nose buried in Aristotle. Or writing and working in cool coffee shops around Austin. 

All distinct. But all imbued with meaning, laced with hope. So close, so real. Within reach but just out of my grasp.

But with a single email, they become fiction. Unlived lives, destined to remain imprisoned in my imagination. The templated explanations, empty of empathy, like “we thought you were great” and “it was really competitive,” are seared into my brain like scar tissue. 

Every time I felt frustrated. Wronged. All the work, all the waiting, all the worrying. For nothing. 

I had enough experience. I did everything I could to prepare. I would’ve been perfect. It didn’t make sense. I deserved it. 

defining deserving

I think deserving exists at the intersection of desire and sacrifice. I feel like I deserve something (a) when I want it, and (b) when I make the sacrifices I believe are necessary to get it. 

(a) Deep down, I think we all hold a secret unspoken belief we're unique in the universe and should get what we want. The world should shuffle itself around our desires. Somewhat immediately. Somewhat seamlessly. 

(b) Sacrifice is an act of bartering with the future. Giving up something now, in the hope that you will be rewarded with something you want more in the future. Sacrifice tends to take the form of time and energy: days at your desk, lost sleep, missed vacations, less time with family, fewer visits with friends. There’s also an emotional involvement that comes with sacrifice. As you invest more of yourself into something, you become attached to it. Severing that attachment is painful.

becoming bitter

I’ve lived long enough to experience how life doesn’t always serve up the storyline you were hoping for. 

I know what it feels like to watch a dream pursued with devotion, wrapped so tightly to your identity, die. To have a door slam shut you’ll never be able to open again. To cope with a failure you’ll never be able to fix.

And I know what it’s like to pick yourself up and try again. To sew the tattered threads together of the life you wanted, and trudge on. To earnestly craft a revised storyline, despite knowing it’s not one you envisioned.

Then, with a glimmer of hope, seeing new stars align. Beginning to believe all the prior failures set you up for this new exciting thing… Only to fail again. To feel like a fool. To be ripped from another storyline. Rebuild again.  

The irreversibility of it all hurts like hell. 

Like the universe has an utter disregard for your feelings, your hopes, your dreams. Like it doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about how badly you wanted something to work out. 

It’s confusing. Demoralizing. To sacrifice for something you want, only to be snubbed. I’ve felt how tempting the tug of cynicism is. How resent reverberates. How bitterness beckons.

danger of deservance 

Last Fall, I decided I don’t want to become bitter even if I don’t end up with the life I wanted. 

I’m learning that life is hard. Messy and complicated and beyond anyone’s total control. I can fabricate all the fictional lives I want, but life has no obligation to listen. And if I can’t adapt, if I can’t attune to the questions life is actually asking me, rather than the questions I wish it asked me, I’m left angry that my life didn’t unfold exactly as I had envisioned. 

The danger of feeling I deserve things is that I’ll continually feel frustrated with fate and cheated by chance. Impatient for the world to pay my dues. And because desire is ceaseless, deserving is ceaseless. I can always think I deserve more than I’m given. 

Deserving is the exact opposite of gratitude.

And I’m convinced the logical step after deserving is nihilism: the belief life is meaningless. Because if I make sacrifices to get something and I don’t get it, I begin to believe the world is unfair. Corrupt. Broken. If my effort isn’t rewarded, then why make any effort at all? There’s no causality, so I can do anything I want. My words don’t matter. My actions don’t matter. My goodness, or lack of goodness, doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. 

extend your horizon

The solution to escaping the danger of deservance is cultivating the patience to endure and the simplicity to have faith.

Good people have good outcomes. But, there’s a crucial caveat: Good people have good outcomes over a long enough time horizon. You may want immediate, but immediate doesn’t work. You can’t count the seconds. You just have to give things time. Sacrifice an investment. It will pay off. You just don’t know when or how.

My definition of faith has become: The belief that I'll find my way to where I'm meant to be. Even if I stumble off track. Even if it feels far away. Even if I don't know how. Trusting each opportunity, each choice, each moment will culminate to a life I love. 

Anthony de Mello: Faith is insecurity. You don’t know. You’re ready to follow and you’re open, you’re wide open! You’re ready to listen… no matter where it leads you and when you don’t even know where it’s going to lead you. That’s faith. 

I can’t see the future but I trust in it anyways.

I simply need to engage in the life-long process of living properly, doing what I know is right, with the patient belief that it matters. Because it does. 

In the end, everyone gets what they deserve.

And even if I don’t, a life lived virtuously is more than enough for me.  

utter ignorance

I find consolation in the reality that there’s a bigger game at play than I can comprehend. That the complexity of life extends far beyond the confines of my little human mind.

Sometimes we have to lose what we thought we deserved to be given what we truly deserve. Sometimes we need to fail so that we can succeed (motivational, right?). Sometimes we need to be picked up by seeing hands from the path we want to walk onto the path we need to walk. 

As J.K. Rowling reflects on hitting “rock bottom” in her 2008 Harvard commencement speech:

… failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. 

Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.

If I got one of the jobs I thought I deserved, I’d inhabit a life that fit like a shirt shrunk in the dryer. I wouldn’t have learned the lessons only failure and frustration can teach. Most importantly, I wouldn’t have found my way to writing, to work that feels like a true calling. I wouldn’t be here, now, with you. 

Ultimately, I’m led to a timeless, humbling reminder of my utter ignorance: What do I know about what I deserve?

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Thank you for reading my writing. I hope this piece made your day a little more beautiful.

If you enjoyed this, you might like my related piece on the tides of life or my newsletter on playing cards with friends.

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