I need to come back to the issue of fair. I struggle almost daily with the fact that I can’t see “fair” in the world, that there isn’t an evident balancing out of good and evil. I want to see the people who do wrong brought to justice and those who do right rewarded. But that doesn’t happen always, or even often.
As our nation — and others — struggles with a bad economy, the people who brought it to its knees are living large, often larger this year than back before the recession was evident. The people who were cajoled into funky mortgages, told that they, too, could own a piece of the American dream, are homeless and their neighbors have seen the equity they built in their homes erased, along with the value of their retirement accounts and stock portfolios.
Bad people get away with stuff, and meanwhile shit rains down in piles on others. Okay, I admit it, on me. How many blows can one person take before giving up and giving in?
When I was a child going to religious school at our little synagogue, I was given the impression that God would work it all out in the end. I don’t believe in that Old Testament God anymore, one who rains plagues down on the evil and riches on the righteous. I think of God as the goodness in people, the love we show to one another, and a presence in the universe that is more of a watcher than a doer. Maybe you disagree, but that’s what I believe.
So where is the fair? Why did this life happen to me? I realize some of it was my own choices. But did I choose to have a case of rheumatoid arthritis that has been intractable and unchecked by even the newest therapies? Did I choose = to have an autistic child? I believed the heartfelt words of the two men I married (at different times). One loved alcohol more than me; the other hid from himself and others the gender dysphoria that eventually led me to being a loophole in the same-sex marriage wars (I’m married to a woman, legally, in a state that doesn’t allow it). Should I have been more skeptical? If I try for love again, should I question my judgment and the lucky (!) man’s words and actions more critically? And what is critical enough anyway?
I have paid my taxes and my dues. I work as hard as I can every single day and try to tread lightly on the world and on my fellow human beings. I believe in giving so that you feel it and do so. I teach that philosophy to my child. Meanwhile, there is a guy who lives in a big house on Lake Washington who has been a bad neighbor, an unethical businessman, and a faithless spouse. He seems happy enough in his big car, talking about his European vacation and that $20,000 kitchen redo that will be done when he and his shiny family return.
How do you not get jealous of what bad people have and angry at what good people don’t. How can I not care so much about the balance being off in the universe?
I’m open to suggestions.
I respect honest and raw, and you do it so well. Your posts inspire me to think. When my kids say life isn’t fair, I tell them, “No it isn’t, and you wouldn’t want it to be.” Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t even know what fair means. If everything was fair, someone would have to decide what fair was immediately making fair subject to the opinions of the few and thus not fair. I try to focus on my own life more than others’. When I see a family who appears to have it all, I really do believe they would never see it that way. The grass is always greener . . . and when my kids all yell that I’m not “fair,” I tell them I must be or they wouldn’t ALL be telling me I’m not. I do believe, in the end, the good people get what they deserve and the bad people don’t. But that decision of good and bad, thankfully, doesn’t rest with me. (Sorry, I think I just wrote more of a post than a comment!)
If I inspired you to write a post — in my comments or on your site — then my work here is done, right?
You have a way better handle on Fair than I do. You acknowledge that fair isn’t what you want life to be. But I’m still in the child’s place of wanting it to be like that. My shrink always asks me if I’m making myself happy by looking for the fair in things. The answer is no. But I find it hard to continually “love what is” or even accept what is. I want to throw a tantrum and say it’s not fair and have God or the world decide I’m right and make it all fair for me. Dammit.
Don’t let me fool you. I throw plenty a temper tantrum. Sometimes they are just good for the soul. But you really did inspire me to look at “Fair” objectively. It wouldn’t have been as easy to write what I did had I been in a very unfair place. Thanks again!