We live in times where entitlement feels natural. We expect recognition, comfort, fairness, and ease. When these do not appear, we are quickly irritated. A missed opportunity lingers longer than it should. Small inconveniences take up more space than the situation warrants. It helps to ask a harder question. What changes when we believe that no one owes us anything?

When we don’t have any sense of entitlement, ordinary things register differently. We don't miss the things we don't have and we are not bothered by things that leave us. We become less anxious about what we don't have and less worried about things we lose. When we realize that we are entitled to nothing, we become grateful for everything we have.

Everything we have is a gift on loan

Stoics treated events as the result of causes, not claims. Things happen because other things preceded them. They do not respond to our sense of fairness or deserving. Since we are not entitled to anything, everything we have is a gift on loan. When we lose anything in life, we have not really lost it. We have just returned what was given to us to enjoy for a while.

Never say about anything, “I have lost it,” but say, “I have returned it. - Epictetus, Enchiridion, 11

This way of looking at things changes our experience of loss. We never truly own our health, possessions, relationships, or status. Yet we are given these things. When they change or disappear, nothing has been unfairly taken from us.

The Stoics believed that everything we experience is the result of a prior cause. So why complain about things that are the result of something that happened earlier?

Accept whatever comes woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs? - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.26

Instead of mourning our loss, we should be thankful that we had them as long as we did.

What we have now is what we craved for

We take what we have for granted. We tend to feel that it is the next promotion, the next higher salary, the next car, the next dress that will put us over the top. It seldom occurs to us that what we have now are the things we once wished to have and believed would make us happy. When we constantly dream about what we don’t have, we miss appreciating what we do have.

Don’t dream about things you don’t have. Instead, think about the best things you now have and how much you would crave them if you didn’t have them. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.27

The miracle of what we have

Whenever we succeed, we assume that we made it happen. Why should we be grateful? Little do we realize that a delayed decision, a missed phone call, a different manager, or a different year could have altered it all. Once things settle, we treat them as fixtures. The job becomes something we have rather than something that worked out. Health becomes background. Relationships feel permanent simply because they have lasted. We stop noticing how much depends on circumstances continuing as they are.

When we remember how easily things could have unfolded differently, we will be less inclined to compare ourselves with others and make ourselves feel miserable.

We arrive at a place where no one owes us anything, everything we have is a gift, and we are blessed to have all that we do now.

He who is grateful for present goods does not long for what he lacks. - Seneca, Moral Letters, 9

Gratitude arises naturally when we acknowledge that nothing in life is owed to us, yet we are blessed with so much. Even in times of loss, we are reminded that countless gifts remain—each deserving our sincere appreciation.

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