“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding.”

Cheryl Strayed wrote these words in “Tiny Beautiful Things,” and they resonated with me so much I cut them out and taped them to my mirror.

For years, I have heard folks bluster on about the so-called “entitlement generation” — one of many not-so-affectionate attributes blanketing millennials.

Truth be told, in many cases, they are right. There seems to be a common thread among people who do not want to work to earn their keep.

We stick out our hands and wait to be fed. We stamp our feet when we do not get our way, and expect to reap the benefits of work we are unwilling to put in.

It is often said that expectation is the root of all heartache. Yet people have made a habit of throwing tantrums when life does not play out the way they planned it.

This unbecoming trait is found in people of all ages and generations. We see it impacting large, important situations (for example, folks first entering the workforce expecting to earn the same as a tenured employee in their field) and it rears its ugly head in silly little ways — through the bickering people arguing at the supermarket, or the whining and moaning we do over things we expect to be free.

We gripe about a commercial playing before our YouTube video, complain about answering a question on a website, or scoff at social media sites for throwing in sponsored posts.

The worst part of it is, in every case I have just mentioned, these consumers are not asked to spend a penny. Yet, someone has to make sure Facebook works properly. The content on that website has to come from somewhere. Something has to pay for the web hosting on that YouTube channel.

Someone has to be paid, but we do not want to foot that bill.

We have become unreasonable. We expect handouts. We look for the negative in the strangest of situations, and, instead of having the pride to work our tails off until we can change our circumstances, we pout that the circumstances were not our way to begin with.

We seem to have forgotten the difference between a right and a privilege. The lines are blurred between what we are given as Americans and what we have to work to earn.

Over the weekend, we celebrated our fundamental rights. Our Founding Fathers made certain we had the right to free speech, to bear arms, to practice whichever religion we prefer. Since then, thousands of Americans have died defending these rights, and they should not be taken for granted.

We must remember that nothing in this world — even freedom — is free. All things worth having are worth working for.

You just have to play your cards right.

Ambrosia Neldon is the general manager at Leader Publications. She can be reached by phone at (269) 687-7700, or by email at ambrosia.neldon@leaderpub.com.