You get what you deserve? Maybe not. Maybe you actually don't get what
you deserve. Maybe believing that you get what you deserve, is
naïve. And we do like to believe we get what we deserve. It's one
of the cherished beliefs we have about the way
life works.
We like to believe we'll be judged evenhandedly and rewarded
accordingly and fairly ie that we'll be judged to be bad
or we'll be judged to be good and based on that, we'll get
what we deserve, either as a comeuppance or as a reward - at least we
hold it that way colloquially even though we're
big
people and we know the "naughty or nice" list is a
fairy
tale.
Doesn't "You'll get what you deserve" ("You'll get what's
coming to you") reek of a
finger-wagged-in-the-air
omen of a kind of karma retribution, a penalty, a judgement?
Consider
all such noir prognostications are actually nothing more (and nothing
less) than added
interpretations.
To hold it that you get what you deserve, is to add an
interpretation
to a
fact,
something I
eschew
doing myself, especially whenever I'm nimble enough to catch myself in
the
act
of it.
When I am nimble enough to catch myself in the
act
of it / when I'm nimble enough to tell the truth about it, I can
distinguish the
interpretation
I'm adding to the
fact.
And the
trouble
with adding
interpretations
to
facts
is that in and of themselves,
facts
aren't
trouble.
Facts
are simply
what's so.
But a
fact
with an added
interpretation
becomes a skewed
fact
which causes
trouble
inasmuch as it resembles something that looks likewhat's so
yet isn't really
what's so
ie is really just fauxwhat's so.
And if there is any
secret
to living life well, it's to have a powerful relationship with
what's so,
different than faux
what's so.
"You get what you deserve" is an example of one of our most
common,
cherished beliefs which we deploy as an
interpretation
added to the
facts.
In other words, "You get what you deserve" is an example of faux
what's so
accepted as true without due diligence, in-depth examination, or
insightful
discovery.
Let's examine "You get what you deserve.". The
fact
is "You get what you get", yes? The added
interpretation
is "You deserve what you get" (like a score's being kept
on some
cosmic
scoreboard somewhere), yes? But you don't get what you deserve. Without
that added
interpretation,
in life you get what you get (it's very
Zen).
That's it. That's all. That's a fact. Not faux fact. Just fact. In life
you get what you get. Added
interpretationsdon't
make any difference.
Now watch: without the
interpretation
"deserve" coming into the equation, how do we have a powerful
relationship with what we get ie whatever we get? (and with
the
interpretation
"deserve" coming into the equation, the margin for having a powerful
relationship with whatever we get, is slim). How do we have a powerful
relationship with whatever we get, especially given the
Zen
of "we get whatever we get" regardless ie we get whatever
we get anyway?
Try this on for size: "You don't get what you deserve. You get what you
get, and you have to be OK with that.". That's David Philp, lead
singer songwriter for The Automatics (see the
source quotes
at the start of this essay). He's awesome. No added
interpretation.
Just
what's so.
Now that's having a powerful relationship with what you
get. Invent the possibility of
surrendering,
of
being accepting,
of being OK. That's having a powerful relationship with
what's so.
