“It’s Not Fair!”
This phrase evokes such righteous emotions. It’s a point of view that we’ve all been taught.
You probably have agreed with such a declaration, or even uttered it yourself a time or two. But after 41 years on this planet, I’ve come to a conclusion:
Fair is for fairy tales.
That’s where most of us got the notion, right? Maybe not strictly fairy tales, perhaps after-school specials or Saturday morning cartoons, but it’s thread into our culture. It’s the balance that our parents tried to keep in our homes growing up - especially if you had siblings.
Though, when you think about it, the concept of fairness kind of fucks your mind up.
It is a lofty premise. An aspiration, really. It’s a utopia, where evil deeds are punished and we all die peacefully in our sleep at 102.
You leave childhood expecting fairness in the world, only to find out that the ‘real world’ couldn’t give two fucks about maintaining that balance. If you’re lucky, you figure this out relatively early and are able to adjust.
If not, you find yourself unhappy. Mostly because your belief system is not based in reality.
Why? Because no matter how it was packaged for you, ‘fair’ is in the eye of the beholder. It’s a perspective and definitely one that is usually invoked when things aren’t going your way. It’s not necessarily based in truth. How do I know this? Because the truth does not change. Truth? Water is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. It’s also wet. Water being anything more than that is a matter of perception. To a drowning man, it’s a killer. To a woman dying of thirst, it’s her savior.
Fair is based on belief. Belief is based on perception. Perceptions can be wrong.
Fair keeps us in a victim mentality. Unfairness is invariably inflicted upon us by forces outside our control and our declaration of this affirms our acceptance of that power.
Instead of squawking about what’s unfair, we can take the situation and figure out a way to use it to our advantage. We can look at our circumstance like a crime scene investigator and see where our responsibilities lie. We can decide whether or not this situation is really as important as we’re making it. We can make the choice to forget about the whole thing and just let it go and move on. Few things deserve an upgrade to DEFCON 1.
All I’m saying is that you should be really careful about declaring things unfair. What you’re really saying is that you didn’t like what happened and are completely powerless to do anything about it and this also may be a mini-tantrum.
Trust me, that isn’t a good look.
