entitled

I was in a patient's room doing a stroke assessment during lunch, when I realized she hadn't eaten much of her food.  I asked her if she didn't have an appetite.  "Oh I'm hungry alright.  But this food is disgusting.  I wouldn't touch it."  This especially struck me because the last several rooms had told me how delicious their lunches were.

I got a call from the pharmacy.  "We have a patient here who you've helped financially with a perscription before.  He's demanding that you pay for this one too."

I passed two staff members during a break.  I heard one say "Well, if they don't approve those days off, I will just quit.  I'm going to the beach no matter what."

Art critic Robert Hughes wrote about American society a few years ago in The Culture of Complaint.  His thesis is that we live in a society where people perceive themselves to be entitled to having all desires fulfilled.  We take this to be part of our birthright.  We accord ourselves victim status when it doesn't happen.  We live in a culture of complaint.  It forms our minds and hearts.*

I see it in my life.  When I get caught up in the things I want but don't have.  When I look at something in my life and say "it's not fair".  When I am reminded that I am in the top 5% of wealthiest people in the world.  When I take for granted that at the end of each day I get to leave the hospital and go home.  It's so easy to complain....when I have so very much to be grateful for.

G.K. Chesterton once said, "Here ends another day during which I have had eyes, ears, hands, and the great world around me, and tomorrow begins another.  Why am I allowed two?"*

..that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever. Psalms 30:12


 *from Love Beyond Reason, John Ortberg