Life isn't fair

Life isn’t fair.

I remember my dad saying this to me in the middle of a fight. I don’t remember what we were fighting about, I just remember screaming “it’s not fair!” thinking maybe if I said it loud enough, whoever was in control of such things would magically make it fair.  At my father’s retort, I cleverly suggested “well shouldn’t we be trying to make it as fair as possible?”

My answer is no, 15 year old Liz. Sorry I betrayed you.

I’ve always considered myself a hard worker. If I want something, I will put everything I have on the line for it. I believe in a good, honest day’s work. I believe in working for what I want. At first glance, it seems I hold the traditional American values: work hard and climb to top, because, by golly, if you work hard, you deserve the top, you will achieve your dreams, and you will be successful. But I think this mindset is precisely the problem. The problem with capitalism, socialism, and all the other isms you can think of. The problem with our generation. The problem with me.

Working hard isn’t the problem. Doing what you want isn’t the problem. The problem is the step taken after. The idea that after all the hard work, the world owes me.  I deserve the outcome that I’ve worked for. Hard work becomes a means to an end. I will get A’s in all my classes to get a degree to get a job to go to grad school to get a PhD to publish papers to… I will do whatever it takes to get what I want because it’s the end result that matters, not the in-between.

But what happens when the outcome isn’t delivered? When, even after all the hard work and the grade-A effort, you fail. What if after putting it all on the line, the result isn’t what you intended. Truth be told, this happens the all the time. People fail. I fail. People fail me. The system fails me. It all together doesn’t work, despite my best efforts. The world still owes me, damn it! I don’t deserve this result! Where is what I’m looking for and where are you, God?

Here are some common themes in the answers that run through my head:

“Just trying a couple times isn’t going to cut it, you need to persevere! It’ll come eventually”

“God knows best. It just isn’t time for you to get what you want yet”

“You must have done something wrong. The system works, you just don’t work correctly in it”

“Outcome X probably isn’t good for you anyway. It’s not your fate. Your failure is a sign.”

The replies are plenty, but they never really cut at the heart of reality. The fact of the matter is, the outcome was NEVER the point. Because the truth, at least the truth as I’ve come to realize, is that all the important things in life can never be earned. They have to be given.

Because how, ever, could I earn my life? How could I ever earn someone’s love? How could I ever earn the feeling of someone wrapping their arms around me? How can new parents earn the feeling of holding a newborn child? How could any of us earn forgiveness, especially after terribly hurting someone? How can we earn those moments that stick with us because they’re simply too big to forget? They all have to be given. There is no system, or formula, or rule book, or whatever, for these things, no matter how hard we try to reduce it.

For the entitled, the “given” is an easy escape from trying. Because if it doesn’t matter what work I do or don’t if I’m given everything, why should I work? To them I say the same thing: the point is NEVER the outcome. The point was never to “get”, whether or not you work for it.

The point is to be. Here and now, regardless of what happens tomorrow, we are alive. And while receiving those important things - those things we want so badly - is completely out of our hands, we have every opportunity to put them in someone else’s. We have the opportunity to give to someone else. Working hard does not have to be some cost-benefit analysis focused on the end result. Instead, it can be an expression of love. Because that work means something. Because it is something you believe in. Because that work signifies that even though the result may not be the desired, you were genuine in your effort. It is an expression of love for all that has been given you.

Has it not been said “…Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?...For [it is known] that ye have need of all these things… take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself”. Applied here, regardless of tomorrow, we can live today. We are more than the things we want or even what we need.

So, no. Life isn’t fair. It wasn’t ever meant to be.