No One Owes You Anything
Projekt Rattloch — Week 4 🐀🕳️ Harry Browne
SLART NOTE:
I don’t have much in terms of personal updates to share this week, apart from one of my best friends gave a Memento Vivere flyer to British National Treasure, Nigel Havers, outside of our local pub. Things are moving along, but I have something more pressing to share with you that has shifted my perspective.
I fell down a ‘Rat Race Rabbit Hole’, starting at the man who walks his talk, New Escapologist’s,
and ending with the work of Harry Browne; suddenly, everything made more sense. I had so many blind spots that have now been revealed.His 1973 book “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World” sounded like an outdated relic. Nine years before I was born. However, this man was talking common sense in a language I didn’t even know existed, and it is timeless.
Two of his core ideas hit me hard. He said most of our lack of freedom comes from what he called “Identity Traps”:
The belief that you should be someone other than yourself.
The assumption that others will do things the way you would.
That’s it. That’s the source of many of my problems.
Trying to twist myself into being someone else. Expecting others to act in a certain way, then feel let down. It’s exhausting. Can you relate?
Before you dive into the book, read this letter Browne wrote to his daughter on Christmas Day, 1966. It says more in a few paragraphs than some books say in 300 pages.
This isn’t just advice, it’s practical liberation in plain language.
December 25, 1966 by Harry Browne
It’s Christmas and I have the usual problem of deciding what to give you. I know you might enjoy many things — books, games, clothes.
But I’m very selfish. I want to give you something that will stay with you for more than a few months or years. I want to give you a gift that might remind you of me every Christmas.
If I could give you just one thing, I’d want it to be a simple truth that took me many years to learn. If you learn it now, it may enrich your life in hundreds of ways. And it may prevent you from facing many problems that have hurt people who have never learned it.
The truth is simply this:
No one owes you anything.
How could such a simple statement be important? It may not seem so, but understanding it can bless your entire life.
No one owes you anything.
It means that no one else is living for you, my child. Because no one is you. Each person is living for himself; his own happiness is all he can ever personally feel.
When you realize that no one owes you happiness or anything else, you’ll be freed from expecting what isn’t likely to be.
It means no one has to love you. If someone loves you, it’s because there’s something special about you that gives him happiness. Find out what that something special is and try to make it stronger in you, so that you’ll be loved even more.
When people do things for you, it’s because they want to — because you, in some way, give them something meaningful that makes them want to please you, not because anyone owes you anything.
No one has to like you. If your friends want to be with you, it’s not out of duty. Find out what makes others happy so they’ll want to be near you.
No one has to respect you. Some people may even be unkind to you. But once you realize that people don’t have to be good to you, and may not be good to you, you’ll learn to avoid those who would harm you. For you don’t owe them anything either.
No one owes you anything.
You owe it to yourself to be the best person possible. Because if you are, others will want to be with you, want to provide you with the things you want in exchange for what you’re giving to them.
Some people will choose not to be with you for reasons that have nothing to do with you. When that happens, look elsewhere for the relationships you want. Don’t make someone else’s problem your problem.
Once you learn that you must earn the love and respect of others, you’ll never expect the impossible and you won’t be disappointed. Others don’t have to share their property with you, nor their feelings or thoughts.
If they do, it’s because you’ve earned these things. And you have every reason to be proud of the love you receive, your friends’ respect, the property you’ve earned. But don’t ever take them for granted. If you do, you could lose them. They’re not yours by right; you must always earn them.
A great burden was lifted from my shoulders the day I realized that no one owes me anything. For so long as I’d thought there were things I was entitled to, I’d been wearing myself out — physically and emotionally — trying to collect them.
No one owes me moral conduct, respect, friendship, love, courtesy, or intelligence. And once I recognized that, all my relationships became far more satisfying. I’ve focused on being with people who want to do the things I want them to do.
That understanding has served me well with friends, business associates, lovers, sales prospects, and strangers. It constantly reminds me that I can get what I want only if I can enter the other person’s world. I must try to understand how he thinks, what he believes to be important, what he wants. Only then can I appeal to someone in ways that will bring me what I want.
And only then can I tell whether I really want to be involved with someone. And I can save the important relationships for those with whom I have the most in common.
It’s not easy to sum up in a few words what has taken me years to learn. But maybe if you re-read this gift each Christmas, the meaning will become a little clearer every year.
I hope so, for I want more than anything else for you to understand this simple truth that can set you free: no one owes you anything.
How many times have you tried to change who you are to fit some ideal?
How many times have you felt let down, expecting someone to act in the way you’d hoped?
Tell me more in the comments…
Previous Project Rattloch posts
This might surprise you, but I don't agree with Browne in that letter at all. On paper and in legality it might be true that nobody owes you anything, but it's far too literal an interpretation of the world, too brutal to hold dear as a way of seeing life. It's too Libertarian for me and points to a very lonely path indeed. It denies that there are such things as community or society. We *do* owe each other respect. We *do* have a duty to behave well to each other, to give each other the time of day. It's true that we can't always expect those things from others and we can't take it for granted when we do, but it's only because of people with attitudes like Browne's that we too often don't. "No one has to like you, no one has to respect you," but why wouldn't they? Just be cool is what I say. Be cool to yourself, be cool to others, give people the benefit of the doubt unless they give you clear reason not to. Browne isn't cool going by that letter: he sounds like an uptight prick!
I tried to appeal to the rationality that I thought that one of my hyper - conservative Evangelical cousins had, but I guess that said rationality was a MIRAGE, a phantom, a figment of my imagination. Rationality, discernment & CRITICAL THINKING, etc. are pretty much ALIEN to her.