If you’re looking for fairness, you’ve come to the wrong life.
“It’s not fair,” a young client says about her mother’s recent cancer diagnosis.
I bite my tongue, knowing that while she’s hurting, it’s not the time for me to say, “Life isn’t fair.”
That’s the truth: Life is not fair. And the sooner we realize this, the less painful our lives will be. There is no cosmic place I’m aware of where fairness rules. Life’s randomness only makes sense when we look back and the puzzle pieces appear to have meaningful positions. Often, what seemed the worst decades ago turns out to be the best outcome. What seems like the best turns out to have been a mistake.
We rarely understand in the moment the way life packs what ultimately become gifts. They seldom arrive with beautiful wrapping paper and a large colorful bow. Usually, they come trodden, weary, and filled with stink that makes us want to run.
Life is not fair. Knowing this makes life easier. I thought I’d learned this lesson long ago, and this knowledge has been helpful as I’ve traveled through the many challenges in life.
But right now, with all that’s going on in our country and our world, I’ve regressed to a place where I want fairness. I don’t understand why horrid people who harm others get to have lives filled with travel, fine meals, golf, and anything else they want. They get to live the lives we dream of, while people I love are enduring personal nightmares.
Although I realize why questions are never helpful, I still have some:
Why does one of my most beloved friends have to deal with cancer?
Why has my husband known excruciating pain and come close to death the past few years? And even worse, why did his first-born son have to suffer for most of his brief life that ended months before his second birthday? I’ll never understand the suffering of babies and small children.
Why did my best friend’s husband get Alzheimer’s despite doing everything they say can prevent this dreaded disease? A good person, I have to wonder why his life had such a traumatic end. Why was my best friend forced to watch the love of her life suffer? Why did she have to become a prisoner in her own life, in her own home?
Why was my oldest friend paralyzed at 19 and destined to live a life with multiple hospitalizations and more close brushes with death than I can comprehend? Why?
I could go on with why questions, but why bother?
Life makes little sense when we look for fairness, and why questions never offer reasonable or helpful answers.
I like to think there’s so much more than we know as we live our lives here on earth. I like to believe that, ultimately, the suffering those I love have known will transform into a beautiful forever after this life has ended. Conversely, I like to hope those who have harmed others in this life will know an incomprehensible hell.
I’m not naturally a vindictive person, but it’s hard to watch destructive people get away with it.
I guess I’m still looking for fairness despite believing there’s no such thing in this life.
Fair? What a loaded word. And you are so spot on that we do not have the full picture many times to assess this fairness. When life seems fair often it isn’t to someone else. I think the whole idea of fairness is a farce. We want what we can never get. Instead, I like to think in terms of what is “good, right and just”. Fair just seems unfair in so many ways.
Thank you for this thought provoking piece.
A beautifully written piece full of wisdom, perspective and human frustration. The concept of fairness seems to be a big part of childhood. I can still hear my kids saying “but that’s not fair!”
I know for a fact that life isn’t fair but I don’t think I have ever completely given up on the childlike concept that it should be. Life would be more gratifying and predictable. If only…