I recently saw a dom who went under the pseudonym of “King” complain that he didn’t have as many followers on Twitter as he thought he deserved. I would strongly disagree, he had just as many followers as he had earned.
The word “deserve” bothers to me no ends. Unlike its closely related cousin earned, deserve generally has to do with things one believes they are entitled to. It is a word that means more about the things one should have as opposed to the things one has gone out of their way to get. Deserve bothers me because it is a word that weak people use. It is a word
It is a philosophy of the weak because instead of going out and getting, one waits for things to be brought to them. It is a denial of responsibility, a flagrant disregard for all those who have to go out their way to get the very thing that one thinks one deserves.
The difference between deserve and earn is simple: one waits for what they deserve and one goes out and gets what they earn. I would rather go out and earn $5 than wait for someone to give me the one billion that I think I deserve. Earn is active, deserve is passive.
Politicians invariably cozy up to their electorate telling them wild tales of things they deserve: happiness, health, prosperity yet they never tell them about what they should go out and earn. These politicians promise you the moon yet they never tell you about all those working in the background earning the right to go there by mining ores, refining fuels, building rockets and calculating flight paths.
Deserve takes for granted everything earn doesn’t because nothing is free in this world except for death. Deserve is a word for dreamers fantasizing of a world as it is not, earn is a word for realists trying to make the best of the world as it is. Deserve is the world of a contemptuous class of people who have no notion of what goes into the making things as nice as they are, earn is the world of those who go out and make the world as nice as it is.
Now I will concede that deserve has it’s uses: everyone deserves to be loved, to be safe, to be cherished, to be educated. Having said that, there remains a problem: humanity itself has not earned those things for all of itself. We can talk all day about inequality and human rights but a much more productive day is one spent improving ourselves so that we can bring about the change we so desperately desire.
The word deserve is a word for losers. The word earn is a word for those who work and try to win until they invariably do. Deserve is a distasteful notion of entitlement, earn is a noble notion of self-reliance. Even as a Findom, I work so that I earn every single last cent that comes my way through tributes. I work out, I write, I read and practice my skills. I am constantly improving myself so that I am can constantly be earning tributes.
To quote one of the greatest politicians of the last hundred years: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
Most people my age would prefer happiness over meaning, as though happiness by itself is a satisfying end goal as opposed to something one stumbles into after overcoming a struggle. Our culture has become a breeding ground for those who preach about what you should have, what your life should be like. The politicians of the right and left talk about these things, no one talks about creating a way of living where you can go and do it yourself. Life has become a pursuit of eternal vacation when it should be the pursuit of eternal growth.
I have always been self-sufficient and despised having to rely on anyone. I don’t want someone handing me my life on a silver platter. No, I want to go out and take what is mine for myself, by myself. I want to become better, day by day, moment by moment. I don’t want to stop for anything, not even a moment of breath because I know that life is fleeting and precious, a lesson I learned only by squandering it for so long. I’ve come close to being homeless a few times because I refused to take anything I hadn’t actually earned.
Carpe Diem (literally seize the day) used to mean to me “make every moment pleasurable”, live for pleasure and pleasure alone. Spend your life in perpetual hedonism, never doing anything difficult. Now, carpe diem means to me “make every moment count”. Seize every moment because you won’t get it back. Earn your way through life, be better today than the person who you were yesterday. Do things because they’re hard. That’s the way I live my life because I want to earn what I get, not beg or bitch about what I think I should’ve gotten.
At the end of the day, what you get is because of you and the work you did. You become a stronger person because you have to be stoic through all the petty shit that make up life, lest you get swamped and overwhelmed with the muddy, turbulent waters that make up modern life. Being an alpha, being a leader, being the best person you can possibly be will never be easy. But it is worth it to earn your way, to earn that fucking title. To earn that way of life.
If I have earned it,
You can support the Patriarchy via bitcoin donations:
Photo by Jasper Graetsch on Unsplash
