Today’s mantra was I deserve.
It touched upon something else I have been thinking about recently which is do we/people deserve anything? And, if so, what?
Now today’s practice was more along the lines of I deserve to be happy, or I deserve this time for my practice and myself. So my mantra was I deserve this time to myself. But it still began my thought process thinking of what do we really deserve?
I used to think I deserved a lot of things: to be happy, to be in a good relationship, to have a job, to be successful etc. But it seemed to make me unhappy and make me feel entitled. Like if I wasn’t happy or in a job, then I should be, that was the way things were supposed to be because I deserved it. It would make me unhappy because it made me feel like I was missing out on something essential that I was deserving of in my life. Almost like it was my god given right to be/have _____. I have sort of let go of this idea that I deserve things. Because deserving things doesn’t make it happen. I could deserve the world and nothing would change except my perspective.
But I admit that my way of looking at ‘deserving’ could be totally wrong and probably is! Maybe some people use it as a motivational thing. Similar to I deserve to be happy so I’m not going to let anything get in my way and I am going to be happy!
If so, then fantastic! Perhaps that’s the way to look at things.
But I can’t wrap my head around it at the moment. Maybe someday I will be able to make sense of it, but for now, it’s still something I am trying to piece together.