Deserve Passion

People use the word “deserve” far too freely. Any time you see or hear a sentence with the phrase, “everyone deserves ______” you should immediately think – and perhaps say – “Why?” There is rarely any good answer, and in trying to explain it, the hollowness of the assertion becomes very clear. Outside of a very few basic things, claiming that everyone deserves something diminishes the value of the thing. It’s almost always an excuse for laziness, and is lazy thinking, itself.

“Everyone deserves passion!” Oh really? Why? I can name several counterexamples without effort. It doesn’t take much to be worthy of some measure of ardor, and there is certainly no guarantee that worthiness, or lack of, will be rewarded as appropriate. But the answer to the deserving is there in that last sentence.

The only sure way to deserve passion is to attempt to inspire it.

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