Crushing This Common, Arrogant Belief Forced Me to Finally Grow Up
I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons in my 32 years of life, but there is one lesson that was harder to learn than most.
In fact, it may have been one of the hardest, if only because it now seems so juvenile.
It stems from my upbringing.
I spent my early years living a privileged life.
Both of my parents were teachers, but we never had to worry about money.
As on overthinker, I still wonder why I got so lucky when others don’t have much at all.
It’s probably at the heart of why I have spent most of my professional life trying to give back to others.
There are shreds of guilt that just won’t slough off.
But growing up with so much provided for me also did me an injustice; it sheltered me from learning lessons that I should have learned much earlier in life.
Which is what I’m going to tell you about now.
There is a fact that we all must learn at some point.
Some try to stave off the feeling, the creeping dread.
While others readily accept it.
It’s this.
The world doesn’t owe me anything.
Thinking it does is toxic.
It’s an acrid, corrosive thought that prevents personal growth.
And why should the world owe me something?
I was not born into this world to take from it what I need — and then discard the rest.
I’m on this Earth to exist with others — and to try my best to leave the world better off.
The world should take more from me than I should take from it.
Most of all, I think I’m here to learn how to live.
And I can’t learn when I think that the world owes me something.
I had to fail to learn this.
I had to make stupid mistakes, drink too much, and seek validation in the wrong places.
Most of all, I had to destroy the false image I had of myself.
When I learned I had to have open-heart surgery at the age of 24, I asked myself, over and over, a simple question.
Why me?
Why me?
Why not me?
Why shouldn’t a random swoop of fate befall a random human being on this planet?
I was arrogant enough to think certain bad things shouldn’t happen to a person like me?
But what did I even mean by that?
A person who tried to be healthy? Who was an athlete?
Who, fortunately, had parents who taught him how to eat good food without him needing to think about that for himself?
A person whose parents had money for said healthy food in the first place?
Why not me? That’s the question.
And so I’ve learned this core truth, time and again.
I’ve learned that I’m not unique and that the world does not owe me one iota.
But on the other side of that realization is something I didn’t expect to find; it’s something, dare I say, empowering.
Because on the other side of the false beliefs is the wisdom that only comes from living.
It’s the realization that I have to learn for myself the same hard lessons that all of us must learn.
I must see for myself what I now know to be true.
It’s the kind of truth that no one can ever really, truly share with me.
So, no. I’ll say it again. The world doesn’t owe me anything.
In a strange way, it feels like shedding a burden.
And that right there might be another one of the great lessons in life.
The “truths” I held onto to protect myself are nothing compared to the real truths, the ones that hurt most of all.
