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Entitlement looks something like this… I went to a certain school… my parents had a certain job… I had a certain background… I studied at a certain university… I got a certain degree.

It can be hard facing up to your sense of entitlement. The sense that you deserve to be in a certain position by virtue of your background.

You may catch yourself harbouring this sense of entitlement in your interactions with others. Perhaps your superiors at work appear less qualified than you, and that doesn’t seem fair.

Or you may go through life, blissfully unaware of your assumptions and prejudices. The notion that you deserve a job over someone else, for example, because you’re an indigenous citizen and they’re not.

I’ve often found this sense of entitlement in myself. It has become accentuated in recent years as I’ve reacquainted myself with those I rubbed shoulders with in my youth.

Almost without exception, through hard work and determination, they have risen through the ranks of successful careers into positions of leadership, respected by their peers.

Encountering them, however, my first reaction may not have been one of awe, but rather envy. The feeling that really, by virtue of my privileged upbringing, that ought to be me.

For I remember conversations years ago with many of these friends, as they spoke of their experience at rough inner-city schools, as second-generation immigrants, raised in poverty despite their parents’ best efforts, frequently victims of discrimination and bovver boots.

It’s the sense of entitlement which enables the observer to rob them of their agency. “That should be me by virtue of my upbringing.” Never mind that I struggled through school and studied the wrong degree.

The same could be said for the cars we drive, the houses we live in, the school of our children, the lifestyle we enjoy. A sense of entitlement might convince me that I should be living in a middle-class neighbourhood with a Tesla on the drive.

Instead, I find that humility is in order. In truth, my first decade of employment was disastrous for a variety of reasons. The second decade provided stability, but I was never on the trajectory of my old friends. I just thought to myself, “At last, I have a job I actually enjoy.”

The entitlement of youth needs to be stuffed into a box and put away. None of it benefitted me in any way. My colleagues know nothing of my upbringing. We are an egalitarian bunch, our individual worth based only on how we treat each other.

All that matters to them is knowing that when they ask this gruff northerner a question, he will always provide a helpful answer that will lighten a load. I realise now that this is my station.