Entitlement

i had a great talk with my grandfather yesterday. he sat down next to me and began to reminisce. he started talking about what life was like back when he was growing up. how during the depression, very few people had a job…how he would be sent by his mother to buy a pound of ground beef and a loaf of bread for $0.20. how he and his brothers only had 1 pair of good shoes, so they’d have to go to church at different times, so they could all wear the shoes. how people would sleep on their porches during the summer, because there was no air conditioning and the heat inside the house was commonly too unbearable.

then, he began to discuss how life was during world war II. how you couldn’t buy butter anymore. how gas was rationed and you had to have stamps in order to even purchase it. when your stamps ran out, so did your gas. tires were nearly impossible to come by also. if you got a flat, that was it…there was no store around the corner where you could purchase another one.

that got me to thinking…how would we deal with that today? what would the crime and suicide rates look like if suddenly we were thrown back to those harder times? how would we deal? would we?

why do we have this sense now in our culture that we are entitled to certain things? that we no longer have to ‘suffer’ for anything…that they should just be a given. a new computer, a car on our 16th birthday, unlimited text messaging…

how will this look in the future? what will we have ‘suffered’ for that future generations feel are just owed to them? life before internet, playing outside, cars with manual door locks and windows…

what will you tell your grandchildren someday?