Owed: You owe it to me. I owe it to me, too.

Years ago, I was lamenting on the state of affairs: I was unemployed after earning two Ivy League degrees and completing credits toward a second masters degree. My uncle replied with a hard facial expression-tight-lipped and eyes narrowed, “You’re not owed anything.” I carry that statement with me until this day, concluding that his very frank quip could be rendered obsolete seeing as how he was related solely by marriage.  After all, blood is thicker than water. A split second later, however, another uncle by marriage won over my good graces when he said that I had worked hard for something that never transpired –an entry level job, a foot in the door, and a career trajectory. In other words, forces outside of my control had dominated my life’s journey. Still, the bad cop sentiment burned deeply. I never felt that I was owed anything and instead felt that I deserved something. The former sentence clause has me in the passive, whereas in the clause following the conjunctive “and,” I am in the active. I felt actively inclined my entire life until now.

My uncle’s statement resurfaced a week or so ago, when I went on my daily grocery run for fresh produce. I fancied the fancier products: cotton candy grapes that tasted of the eastern delicacy rose syrup spiked milk from my youth, the gumdrop grapes that tasted what pomegranate seeds looked like – glossy delectable jewels, and sumo oranges that are large, seedless spheres of naturally sugared juice wrapped in fibrous regalia. These scientifically engineered works of art were contradictory and we paid the price for it.

A cashier rang up my grocery a year ago. I remember her Rapunzel-like curled shiny hair seeming to struggle as much as she did with the tattered plastic produce bag filled to capacity with organic stone fruit. I remember feeling elephantine and embarrassed that my daily provisions could be measured in pounds. Upon scurrying out, I took a look at the receipt only to see that the charges for my fruit did not match my consumption. It then dawned on me that as she fought with the Fuji apples, trying to fit all onto the register’s scale, only a fraction of the bushel actually was measured and paid for.  That day, I realized how affordable fruit could be and furthermore, should be. The question is, at what cost?

Self-checkout operates according to an honor system because there is not a security check in place; the weight of products already rang up are not weighed again after being placed on the scale. In other words, one could place any small weight on the scale and then proceed to place a much larger quantity on the already rang up platform. One day, this very scenario played out when I was ringing up my pounds of fruit, only to drive off and realize that the total till was much less than what it usually is. I checked my receipt and sure enough, the contents of my strained produce bag were far too much to be withheld in an enclosed place that is the scale, so that only part of my fruit was accounted for in the price per pound. Ever since then, I had felt it was a human right to have accessible produce and that if the weight of goods was not accurate, than the better for it. Yet, every time I left the market, I felt as if I was bandit – mouth dry, quick of breath, and heavy footed, slogging my way until I found safe ground that was a car in motion – a getaway car. It wasn’t until the attendants caught sight of my register’s affordable prices that they started ringing up my fruit for me. It was demeaning but also humbling and suddenly it rang in my ears – that I was not owed anything, not even food.

To be owed and to deserve are not equitable entities in a logical deduction. The former can mean to do with the intent that someone will pay back in return, and the latter is to do with the intent of doing, just to complete a task. Both, however, are conditional. To be owed is to do something on the condition that something is attained. To deserve is to do on the condition that something is gained that otherwise wouldn’t, and this can include something as intangible as knowledge gained from having studied. Fancy fruit, is affordable and deserved by those work hard for it. I, however, am unemployed and can make do with less flavorful but equally filling fruit. The customer service associates at the market made me rethink what I can and should have and how I can go about having that which I want.

According to psychologist and tenured professor at Penn, Adam Grant, rethinking offsets a switch that induces doubt, and furthermore, discovery. We owe it to ourselves to not be so convinced with the status quo that we are unwilling to evolve with new truth. In this instance, we’re not owed anything, and instead, we are owing in a reflexive manner of speak. So when my uncle said I am not owed anything, he could be referring also to me not owing anything to myself. Herein, there is something to be worked through.

Let’s take that which I struggle with daily but I want to make clear is not my identity: an eating disorder – anorexia with orthorexic tendencies. I owe it to myself to abstain from maladaptive behaviors that have only served to coddle my compulsions – like going on a treadmill despite feeling like my legs will give way beneath me so that my torso will hit a moving belt and fling me into the hard piece of machinery behind me. I owe it to myself to recover. I’m not owed recovery if I do not make an effort to curb compulsory activity, and even if I do, curbing means that there are still times when I will give in – I’ll push myself to continue race walking uphill, and that does not alter the neural pathways of a habit formed. I haven’t broken my habit if I do not completely cut out exercise from my life. I owe recovery to myself. I’m not owed recovery. I have to earn it. I have to deserve it.

This is where I falter: The concept of earning and deserving are oftentimes equated with one another, but they are not distinct isolated entities. Although I can be self-deprecating and say that I do not deserve health, if I were to be speaking to anyone else, I would say that no one deserves to be ill. I owe it to myself to extricate me from a setting that can be triggering; to not go downstairs when someone in my household is on the treadmill or go to the gym.  It’s not fair for someone suffering from alcoholism to go to a bar and expect to be ok from abstinence. No one owes them anything, just like no one owes me anything – the favor of not exercising.

In the third episode of the final season of my favorite television series, Gilmore Girls, Frenchman, Michel Gerard, the Inn concierge and friend of protagonist, Lorelei Gilmore, declared that Lorelei would take him to her mother’s Cotillion. Michel said, “You have no choice. You owe me.” He then proceeds to stick seven Post-Its in slow staccato succession along Lorelei’s arm that reads, “I / Owe / You / One /Big /Favor/ Lorelei Gilmore.” This script does well to demonstrate the concept of what “to owe” means in two ways: the giving and receiving end. First, Michel says that someone else owes him. The context is that Lorelei asked him to take care of her dog while she was away, which he did and which resulted in her dog traumatizing Michel’s own dogs while pillaging his belonging in the process. Michel did not dog sit on the condition that he is owed anything, and neither did he deserve to be owed anything. Instead, Michel had an experience filled with unwarranted harm that jogged someone else, the giver, to owe a favor. Michel had accepted the gesture and used it to that affect. In this instance, Lorelei was merely placating Michel for the inconvenience with no real intention to make it up to him, however, the reflex to owe was readily apparent. To owe is a one-time deal. It isn’t a loan.

There are case scenarios when this reflex, to owe someone on the receiving end of a shorter straw in a stack, so to speak, can be reflexive in another manner of speak. I spoke to my therapist and psychiatrist on two separate occasions about feeling like a financial burden, accepting costly treatment because of no other alternative. My father was approached on this subject, to which he responded that he felt God had purposely endowed him with the means to take care of his daughter, for whom life panned out in a series of unfortunate scenarios. The father-son duo, psychiatrist and therapist respectively, had said that I should be an opportunist and that my father was getting something out of his gesture as well. I owed him that.

The concept of giving is not so selfless. The giver is on the receiving end as well because he/she experiences an uptick in endorphins when giving back unto someone else. So when my uncle said that I am not owed anything, the statement is supposed to be giving. He may be getting something out of telling me this. Perhaps he owes it to himself to owe it to me. He jogged me into rethinking, into doubting, and while there is such a thing as doubt-induced rethinking and discovery, there is also a debilitating doubt that induces a lack of confidence and complete lack of action. He owes me.