The other day as I was turning to leave my client’s she said cheerily,

“I hope you get everything you want over the holidays!”

Then, immediately, she corrected herself.

“I hope you get everything you deserve,” she said, this time more earnest in tone.

It was a subtle distinction that I appreciated even after the fact.

The words “need” and “want” are ever-prominent in our collective lexicon. We use them to describe entities whose presence we desire or require in our lives. We think ourselves more aware, more grateful when we are able to delineate between the two, employing the proper choice in our speech– look at me, so enlightened as to be able to recognize that the sweater I’ve been lusting over at Anthropologie is merely something I want, I don’t really need it. I know that, silly. It is less often that we use the word “deserve” in the same context. We forget, when selecting our diction, that’s one of our options, albeit a more intricate one than a need or a want.

To be deserving is to imply that you are owed something as a direct result of your actions or your character. What you deserve is therefore the mirror image of what you have put forth. There is no such cause and effect element with a need or a want, no recognition therein of the relationship of a certain thing to you. Needs and wants reside on a surface level, a black and white realm instructed by logistics and pragmatics. Deserving it, that’s someplace deeper. That’s striving to acknowledge a person in their most whole sense and to suggest what they are really worthy of receiving.

For my client to wish me all that I deserved felt powerful. It felt really kind. It felt like she recognized that a person could be deserving of far more than they could even conceive of themselves, and if that were the case then she wished me all that I was due, and not just the wish list I could furnish.

I extend that simple wish to all of you– may you receive all that you deserve. May your actions and your character and your choices be rewarded in kind. In tenfold. And may you wish for others the same.