I ran across a question the other day: What isn’t fair right now?
Everything.
The whole world. And everything in it.
A helicopter crashes and takes a legend, his daughter, and seven others.
Billionaires contrasted with millions so poor that my weekly salary is probably more than their yearly.
Beloved actors taken before they’re done creating.
People dying at the mercy of those charged with protecting them.
From health to education. From cognitive skills to drinking water. From war to peace. From violence to love. From pain and suffering to jubilation and ecstasy. Attractiveness, strength, intellect, sight, rights. Even death is unfair. Some live 100 years, others merely a day, or are not born at all.
There isn’t a single thing about life that’s fair. Nothing. And none of it can be made fair. We might be able to attain fairer, but never fair.
Because the human condition is unfair.
That said, our lives must be measured not in how far we elevate ourselves above others, but in how well we elevate others. Success is not achieving a title but in achieving inner peace and awareness no matter what happens to you in life.
We cannot make life fair. No matter how much we try.
Kurt Vonnegut has a short story that parodies this idea of fairness, called Harrison Bergeron. His fictional reality attempts to legislate fairness, bringing everyone to the lowest common denominator. They put shackles on the quick-footed, masks on the pretty, muzzles on the humorous, or the like.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
– Kurt Vonnegut
This is no way to live. Better to accept who you are, and strive for what you can become. It’s better to focus on how you can serve others. It’s best to focus on what you can control.
