hmm???

I talked with a friend of mine the other day and he was talking about his folks paying for his college education. I've noticed that folks who are generally fiscally conservative tend to be a little more liberal when it comes to their education. For a while there was a lot of talk about what to name this generation. We had the baby boomers, Generation X (also Billy Idol's first band) and then....Post Moderns? Generation Y? the busters? I'm sure there's a correct label, but if not, I'd suggest the Entitlement Generation. I fit nicely in that category. Certainly people that are my age and younger could be described this way.
I hear things like, "Of course my parents should pay for my college degree!" - "But, how is it their responsibility to pay for you?" "Because they're my parents!" Somehow you don't hear that argument when they're arguing with their parents about how late they can stay out, or how then spend their time...decisions they make. It's more, "I'm an adult now! I can make my own decisions!"
I lived in a community where just about everybody was given a car when they turned 16. It was just kind of normal. You expected it. We felt like somehow we were entitled to them.
We were wrong.

I think the same is true of kids having their parents pay for their college. I'm NOT saying that it's wrong for parents to pay for their kid's college...I'm saying that it's wrong for kids to just sort of expect it. Even a conservative college students would say that parents should pay for their kid's college. They say that, not because it's a core value that they would generally hold to...but because they don't want to pay for school. We all sort of do that in one way or another. We believe things that will be good for us...not because they're right...but because it suits our present needs.
I know folks who complain because their parent don't buy them cars...and folks that complain because they don't like the kind of car their parents bought them. It's amazing to me how ungrateful we are...how we expect things that we certainly never earned nor deserve. We just kind of think we're entitled to them.
Ultimately what are we really entitled to? What have we earned with our lives? It's not always pretty to think in those terms...but it's sobering.
and humbling...
a wise man once said, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves." I would think it'd be hard to live that way...while at the same time expecting so much of others..
who knows?