A Deserved Shock

All children certainly deserve attention!

Wouldn't it be great if all families had access to hiking?

People ask about culture shock coming back to the US. I generally shrug it off and say, we knew we would have running water here, so it isn't too shocking :). But as I mull one thing over I have to own up to my anger, so I guess I am having some reverse culture shock.

For years the phrase, "you deserve it" has absolutely driven me batty. More so than referring to the US as simply "America," so if you know me you know it is really starting to get under my skin! Maybe my perception is changing, but I see us becoming more and more self centered and inward focused with a "go ahead, you deserve it" attitude.

What do I deserve? While I was picking out Father's day cards, so many said, "Go fishing, watch the game, sit on the couch all day, have a day of rest - you deserve it!" Well, for all my efforts parenting, I know that I don't just naturally deserve living life on easy street! Just the opposite, I think it's a good thing we don't get what we 'deserve,' but instead the best we can hope for is grace.

Another more personal example, we are on vacation right now, which is tempting to see as another thing to say, "yeah, we deserve it."  But if I deserve 'it' does that mean that my friends Naomi, Mary, Ruta, and Mariama do not deserve 'it' because they were not born into a middle class white family in the US? They have never in their lives had a vacation and have dealt with just as many long exhausting days.
The more I think about the phrase, the more I think it is very similar to the fatalistic "Allah wills it" that people in the Sahel so frequently say.  We can think of it on the lips of our neighbor Mary, a mother of 9 children with only 4 left living - loosing 3 children and a husband within 18 months. It's often a somewhat similar cop-out but we would shudder to use "you deserve it" in such a negative way. We all know that no person deserves to have 5 of their children and their husband die.  A difficult thing to deal with and even more so to reconcile with all the gifts and opportunities we have without deserving them here in the US.

-- La Maestra