What do you deserve (in this economy)?
Listen to this on my podcast! Click here.
As someone who works around wellness and care and social justice, I hear a lot of rhetoric about what we “deserve”. For example:
You deserve to live life on your terms.
I deserve respect and care.
We deserve healthcare and housing and basic human rights!
I even use it in one of my subject lines for those who opt-in to receive my new free resource, 7 Tools to Cultivate Revolutionary Relationships in a Dystopian World (get it, it’s awesome!)
I had never questioned the use of this word until one of my teachers, James-Olivia Chu Hillman, told me “deserve implies merit”.
🤯🤯🤯
Do you have to earn the right to live life on your terms? Do I need to earn respect and care? Do we have to work/earn/achieve to have our basic needs met?
What does the dictionary say?
DESERVE
“to be worthy of: merit.”
to be worthy, fit, or suitable for some reward or requital
MERIT
A praiseworthy quality (as in a virtue)
A character or conduct deserving reward, honor, or esteem (as in achievement)
A person's qualities, actions, etc. regarded as indicating what the person deserves to receive.
The only definition here that doesn’t involve achievement or earning is “having a praiseworthy quality”.
How do we understand this in a capitalistic society where meritocracy, competition, and scarcity have been the rules of the game since birth? As a child and young adult, I highly valued my academic achievement - this was my worthiness inside and out (and tbh it still is). I wasn’t athletic, I didn’t see myself as artsy or creative, so school was all I had.
I was the type of student who moved through traditional education with relative ease. Does that make me more deserving of an “A” than my classmate who is neurodivergent or has a learning disability or is neglected at home? Do I deserve better opportunities because I can navigate a colonial, obedience-based educational system? I think not!
At the same time, I understand that if you are treated as subhuman because you’re a woman or disabled or a person of color or lower class, hearing “you deserve to be treated like a person” can help you take care of your needs instead of living for someone else or living according to mainstream notions of success.
In the world I occupy, this language can defy dominant ideologies. The Nap Ministry’s Tricia Hersey wrote a whole book about how rest is resistance. Of course, we “deserve” to rest after working 40+ hours a week in an economy where housing prices are skyrocketing, the climate is collapsing, the police murder Black people, and genocide is an everyday occurrence on top of any challenges we may have around relationships, work, and purpose. Our bodies are under constant stress, and, like any living being, we need to rest to survive.
Image ID: A black and white cat curled up and sleeping.
This is where I’d like to get a little more descriptive. I believe that “deserve” is a way to judge what we NEED or what we WANT.
Let’s shift the sentences above with each of these words:
You need to live life on your terms.
You want to live life on your terms.
I need respect and care.
I want respect and care.
We need healthcare and housing and basic human rights!
We want healthcare and housing and basic human rights!
How does that sit with you to name what you need or what you want? Does it make you squirm to want things? Do you think people need to earn these things? Do you require permission to need or want?
This is an excellent exercise for deciding what you need or want and understanding how you feel about what you need or want. And when you know this, you can learn how you’ve been conditioned into and out of needing or wanting things. You can also discover how wanting something is aligned (or not) with your values.
I will note that “need” is somewhat of a dicey term. We have all heard that basic human needs are food, shelter, and clothing. In The Politics of Trauma (affiliate link), Staci K. Haines defines our inherent needs as safety, dignity, and belonging.
Survival isn’t just about what is material because we are humans with bodies and emotions. What you need is ultimately for you to decide.
Now, you might be saying, “I deserve to be paid for my job because I worked X amount of hours. It’s not that I need or want it as much as I worked for it.” I think you deserve it too! And I think we can re-write this to say, “I need/want to be paid for my job because I worked X amount of hours, and they are legally required to pay me.”
I’m not saying never to use the word deserve, but I think it’s vital to get descriptive about what you mean. This clarifies the communication exchange so there isn’t any confusion about what you “deserve,” which many people might judge differently.
I also wonder if women and gender-expansive folks use the word deserve more than men, and in what context. I have a theory that “deserve” is used almost as a euphemism for “want” because girls and women are conditioned to ask for permission to want things, but boys and men are praised for it. Is “deserve” simply a way to pacify desire?
Lastly, I would like to invite all of us to consider how “deserving” is very outcome-based. Growing up Hindu, I was fascinated with the holy scriptures, especially the Bhagavad Gita. One part really stuck out to me: Chapter 2, Verse 47, which translates to:
Do your duty, but do not concern yourself with the results. We have the right to do our duty, but the results are not dependent only upon our efforts.
When I learned this in high school, I was not happy. I did not like the idea that I couldn’t control an outcome. However, this is how society raises us to think. If we do the “right things”, we will get what we worked for. Deserving can imply that you have to the result of your action.
But it doesn’t always work this way.
Eventually, I started seeing how falling in love with the process is where the magic is. When I consider this relationship, I think less about what I deserve and more about my intentions and actions. I think less about what I deserve and more about what I want and need. I think less about what I deserve and more about what conditioned me to think I deserve it or use the word at all.
What do you think? What do you need? What do you want? How do you feel about it? Let me know in the comments!
ICYMI, here’s what I’m offering in Nishaland!
If you keep overgiving in relationships and don’t feel like you get anything back, I made an amazing resource for you! It includes all tools I use with my one-on-one clients. Download the 7 Tools to Cultivate Revolutionary Relationships in a Dystopian World.
Do you have a writing project that you just aren't working on? Me too lol. That's why I started a writing accountability group! We meet on the first Tuesdays and thirds Fridays each month for an hour. Join here!
If you’re a library worker, please check out my self-paced course Trauma-Informed and Relational Care for Libraries. The next orientation starts in December! Schedule a time to chat with me more about it here.
