Deservedly

It seems that there are times when we are (or I am) so obsessed with what we deserve or don't deserve, that we forget what "deserve" means.

How do we judge "I deserve better treatment than that" or "I worked hard enough to deserve more reward"? How do we know that we "deserve" to have more than others?

Do we distinguish what we deserve from an overt sense of entitlement?

I really don't have all the answers, obviously, and I don't know where to even begin to make a fair judgment. But I do know that often times, what we do deserve is already in the experience, no just the reward or the result of the experience.

I wonder, if we remember that better, perhaps we'd view life quite a bit differently.