What does it mean to "deserve"?
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And she said, I don't deserve you now, of course, I reminded her that she does, but it kind of got me thinking about the word deserve, and I have ultimately realized that I do not believe in deserves. Let me explain. So to kind of backtrack here, Google dictionary defines deserve the verb as do something or have or show qualities worthy of a reward or a punishment. You can think of the phrase I don't deserve this in both a positive reward or a negative punishment
So if someone did something deserving of negative consequences, how do you value the act that they did and then give it a comparable consequence? Because these things can't be quantified necessarily. And the same goes for when someone deserves something good. Quote, unquote. How do you define the value of the person, the positive thing they deserve? How do you quantify any of that or make any of that reconcile?
There's a clear hierarchy on who gets to determine that, right. But I think of worth in the more self determinant sense where it's like body image and how you have to kind of discover your own worth, especially people who are raised as women. I found growing up that I relied so much more on others to tell me what I deserved and what my body deserved based on how I physically appeared right. And I had to figure out that my worth isn't determined by other people
They might have someone looking at them wrong, or perhaps looking at them right, you know, to determine something like that. And so, yeah, definitely a really good point of who's determining that
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