The commercial is for a financial investment company who points out to the potential customer that in our world, everything revolves around the individual, that everything is and should be customized to their specific wants and needs and that as a financial investment company, they too want everything to revolve around you, the customer because you deserve it.  Who am I to say anything against that?  I too would love my world to be customized to my wants and needs, and to some extent it is.  I mean, after all, my donut guy knows exactly what I want when I stop in.  It’s wonderful.  But what I’m concerned about is how easy it can be to just assume or even demand that everything will revolve around my wants and needs.

I get it when things don’t go our way.  There’s disappointment, frustration and even anger that wells up.  However, as adults, we know that not everything revolves around us because a lot of us were taught that as children, right?  I mean, I never hear adults on social media complain because things aren’t going exactly the way they think they should go just for them and what they personally believe/want/need.  That would be childish.  And I expect childish from children. For instance, this past week, the 5th graders in my district were being treated to a minor league baseball game.  It’s a great time for kids to get together with their classmates, feel a little independence (under the watchful eye of teachers of course) and get to have some fun.  However, this year unfortunately, there was an act of God.  A very wet, lightning filled, act of God – and the game was cancelled.  It happened right before I was to have my 5th graders for choir, so I had to tell them the bad news.

Of course there was major disappointment, to the point where several kids were in tears.  They’re ten so I expect this kind of thing.  Then there were the questions like, are they going to reschedule it?  No, there are too many logistics involved to change it (and too hard to explain that to kids).  Then came things like “they owe us!” and “we’ve been scammed”, things I’m sure they’ve heard from someone older than they are and they were angry.  Someone needed to fix it for them and fix it now.  This is where I very calmly suggested that nobody owes them anything and that sometimes life happens.  Not what they wanted to hear.  But that’s what they pay us teachers the big bucks right?

But mine wasn’t the only school.  My grandsons told me that kids cried at their school too, but my grandsons come from a completely different perspective in life.  These boys grew up with very little and lived in foster homes.  They’re usually very grateful for what they get and while disappointed, they understand all too well, that sometimes life happens.  Even when it should have been all about them, it wasn’t

The reason the commercial hit a nerve however is that as a society, we’re demanding to be paid attention to as individuals.  The individual is more important than the whole. It’s in the simple way we name our children so that nobody else has a name like theirs, a name their teachers can’t remember how to say or spell and a name where that child will never be able to get one of those cool little license plates with it spelled correctly and will have to settle for one that says “Winner” or something on it instead.  A world where they will have to spell their name for people for the rest of their lives.

Many years ago I had a child in class who obviously was used to having things their way because it was all about them.  I knew this because she tried to do something once (I can’t even remember what it was) and I told her no.  She then proceeded to say, “but I WANT it!”, over and over again, assuming that just because she kept saying it that eventually I would say, “well, ok, since you asked so many times, sure”.  She quickly learned that while yes, she was important to me, that there were 20+ students in my class that were also important and what we did was important for everyone and not just her.

What scares me now is that we have adults behaving in the same way.  “But I WANT it”.  Well, that’s great, but other people may be involved who may want or need something different.  There may not be anything you can do about it now.  Maybe it’s just not meant to be. You may need this experience to learn patience or how to have a better attitude or sharing or any number of things.  Hey, I would love to live in utopia where everyone got everything they wanted or needed and there were rainbows and unicorns everywhere.  Unfortunately, whether you believe in the fall of man like I do or something else, life is filled with humans and where you have humans you have faults and mistakes and life happens.  And in the process, we can either choose to think it’s all about me and react accordingly or we can figure out what we need to learn about this particular situation and how to make things better in the future, not just for us for for others.  Oh, and figure out that change takes time.  There’s that patience thing again.

How do I know this?  Because I struggle with this all the time.  Laziness and impatience, among others, are things I struggle with daily, but after all of these years, I’m figuring out it’s not all about me.  It’s how I relate to others, how I can help others, how I can make make others look and feel good.  And honestly, I feel better afterwards.  Maybe you CAN teach an old dog new tricks and the trick is,  it’s not all about me.