If I have heard it once, I have heard it a thousand times. “Life is not fair.” I have listened to family members, friends, politicians, and even myself on more than one occasion. I am here to tell you today this statement is the biggest false cliché, defeatist statement that a person can listen to or accept. Once you accept that other factors are in control of your happiness, guess what, they are. Many times we don’t have any choice about what happens to us. We have 100% decisions about how we choose to react to things. Life is very fair, and here is why.
Perspectives of Pain and Suffering
When a person says life isn’t fair, they don’t really mean it. What they mean is, I am going through something less than pleasant, annoying, or downright heart-wrenching, and I prefer it when others experience this stuff, not me. But we all know these feelings are a part of life. I often wish the people I have known were kinder of heart, more intelligent, or just better people, but all the wishing in the world won’t change the past, a situation, or the mindset or actions of people from your past.
Life is so fair that it continually puts things on our plates that challenge who we are, what we believe, where we are going, and who we are doing these things with. It is difficult to take a broad view when the storm is raining directly on you. I have been in that storm and felt like each drop was directly meant to hit and hurt me. It isn’t. Having someone disregard you and your feelings are difficult to handle, but when you allow it to play out, you most often end up better off than you were in the situation you are all broken up about. A relationship ends, you move on to something better. You have to allow it.
I think everyone eventually asks the question, Why me? The answer is that you are human, and all people experience challenges, and they are sometimes easy to deal with, and sometimes they rock your life down to its very foundation. No matter how calm and perfect their life seems on the surface, every person in the world is faced with challenges. It is these challenges that often drive us toward our biggest growth. Otherwise, life would be quite boring. Life is very fair as we are all allowed to participate in uncomfortable things equally.
Step back. When you plug your experience into the giant map of things, perhaps you will find that the tragedy you have suffered is going to make you a better person or take you somewhere you would never have gone. Or led to the development of talents and skills within you that otherwise would have been hidden from yourself and the world.
Don’t Evaluate the Pain of Others.
Another way life seems unfair to some people is that when you compare your life with someone else, it often seems like they have things much better than you, or they have it so much easier than you. Stop that. It is a fantasy in your own mind—a monstrous waste of time and effort. Being jealous of someone else does nothing to change your experience. All people have experienced challenges, all of them. Money doesn’t make happiness. If it did, there would be no need for therapists.
The only person you can control is yourself, so worry about being the best person you can be and understand the principle of fairness that makes everyone equal in their suffering. You can’t possibly understand what was happening in someone’s life. They may look like they have it all handled on the surface, but underneath, there is a very flawed person with unhappy, contentious thoughts. Pain is not something people wear on the outside very often. We all have challenges and experience suffering of some kind. It is how we deal with things that truly defines us.
Why Bad things Happen
There is no way that I can step back far enough to understand why tragically bad things happen. It just isn’t possible. However, I believe that just like people, tragedy enters your life for a reason, most often to teach you something. The problem is that the knee-jerk reaction to most bad things is a healthy fear of whatever has happened.
I think that this is the opposite of what should happen. The initial reaction should be one of love. Why? Love brings light into the darkness. Love can change circumstances where fear merely exacerbates them. There is no way to understand a tragic loss of life or a promising life cut short by accident or disease. However, there is always a choice in how you react to these things. Perhaps that is the reason.
Life is funny, and I can’t even pretend to understand all of the secrets to existence and being happy. I do know that adopting a victim mentality of any sort isn’t going to help anyone move forward, only stay right where you are, usually in misery.
Life is very fair about this.
