Self awareness and entitlement

THE REALM OF ONESELF: The grass was tall and soaring above her head. The sky pink with purple clouds blended to perfection. The air was cool and brisk. Basking in the glory of the beautiful landscape, her mind and body revived with the scent of nature. As she walked further on she found herself at the base of a trail. Her curiosity led her on an expedition down the narrow path with light emanating far in the distance. Trudging through the tall grass and mud, she found herself in a deserted dwelling, gazing at the reflection of herself on the fractured window. She saw a silhouette so dark, an exemplary representation of her mind. She stood still. Her somber eyes mere hollows contrasting with the mood surrounding her, a gaze that brought home her own crestfallen and adrift reality. A reverie engulfed her into a tidal wave she had been festering for so long. The past few years fluoresced across her mind.

The Journey: Having lived a fulfilled and entitled youth, three years ago she finally took the difficult step. She went on to choose a life free of the prerogative of the privileged in order to experiment and evolve. Therefore she moved to a new city to undertake a new journey. An untravelled domain full of dreams and hope. She envisioned that it would change the course of her life and it sure did. However, not in ways that she’d expected. Everything seemed to fall apart. It had broken her in a way that she came crumbling down time after time. Feelings of purposelessness and sadness loomed over her. All these years of her flawed personal life, friendships and life paths made her dubious about her existence. She had a growing realisation that her life’s purpose had eluded her and every passing day was just another blip on the way to oblivion. The Journey Within: At the lowest point of her life, she had some major depressive episodes. After being introduced to antidepressants, therapy and meditation, she finally began her journey to becoming conscious of the fact that she wasn’t happy with what had become of her self. She had been imposing unrealistic demands on relationships and life. Expectations of un-life like standards of beauty, craving for happiness and sometimes even going to extreme lengths to ensure that she got it often at the expense of others. She realised that continuing to harbour a sense entitlement subconsciously for all these years had led her down the path of inflated expectations and subsequent defeat. Frequently in the world of millennials, having a sense of entitlement can easily be mistaken as healthy and often misconceived as self-love. Entitlement is a virulent form of the virus that often harms oneself.

It thrives to become a common aspect of their personality. Without developing self-awareness, one fails to recognise such a pernicious blight withering away dreams, passion, and purpose. Self-awareness helps in perceiving latent aspects of one’s personality like thoughts, actions, strengths, and weaknesses. It is an art that allows one to stay alert. The more one practices self-awareness as a habit, the more he gets closer to a more fulfilling life.