Does your past give you entitlement in the future? It’s a question I find myself pondering often these days. If that truly is the case I’m really missing out. I too, have a past that wasn’t always wine and roses. Yes, I have had trials and tribulations, not always caused by myself, but a result of others actions or perhaps it was all simply fate. Should I begin listing all these adverse actions and circumstances, compiling a list to present as evidence? Evidence to show, I deserve this! In fact, I deserve so much more than I have, I’ve been marginalized.

I find myself questionng that when I listen to all the others dong just that. Everyone having a story or two of survival, of such intence physical or emotional strain, it’s a wonder they are still alive. That is always followed by their stories of triumph. It’s what created their entitlement to whatever it is they are demanding today. And, it doesn’t even have to have happened to you, a distant ancestor will suffice.The suffering is generational. But alas, I’m just a white guy in America and have no such background, mine being solely of entitlement. It was inherited. Or so that is what I’m told. Some would be conflicted by such knowledge,but not me, I’ll continue on the way I always have, one day at a time.

I realize I’m from a different generation, a time and place in the past that no longer exists except in my mind. I was raised to not air your dirty laundry and not to make public your private business. You surely didn’t tell eveyone your mistakes, the hope being they never found out about those times you were less than stellar. You really didn’t tell others how you arrived where you were, just that you had arrived. What I did or didn’t do yesterday has no place in the present. That was yesterday. Those that did that were just looking for one of two things, sympathy or entitlement. Heroes in their own minds, singing their own songs. All I hear is a cry for pity.

Actions speak louder than words. It’s an old adage and one I try to live by. Talking about it is far easier though, I understand that. You could say I’m doing that each time I write these postings. I do talk a great deal about every facet of life. I enjoy philosophizing. I don’t think of myself as a philosopher and have no formal training in that disclipine. In fact, I don’t think you can learn to be a philosopher, you either are, or you’re not.

The whole problem with just using words is it takes a long time to see results. Often, there are no results at all, your words are simply dismissed. Actions however, are immediate, but usually only known by the ones that are present at the time. And that, that is where the story telling enters into the equation. I’m from a time when the story had to come from someone other than the person that performed the action. If you were telling the story, you were just bragging or seeking that sympathy or entitlement. That extended to almost everything in life.

In a previous post, from years ago, I descibed that person as a “But I’m A” Butimah. That’s the response they give when denied whatever they want. Butimah, you can fill in the blank. Butimahs’ are the exceptions in this world. I’ve had to suffer, struggle, survive through whatever. I should get whatever I want. Butimah survivor of my past, that should count for everything. Resting on their laurels is another old adage and one that describes those folks as well. The only differnce being today, those laurels are whatever failures you may have suffered through, whatever misfortune have taken place in your life and indeed any of those things that may or may not have happened to your ancestors, streching back to antiquity. Butimah! It’s a reversal of the past and just as distasteful in my opinion.