why can't life be fair?

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Question: Why is life so unfair. A friend of the family, a beautiful person, is dying of cancer. She doesn't deserve this. What is the point of life if bad things keep happening to good people.

Answer: I always tell my clients that fair died with the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, horrible crash, very sad. As long as we pine for fairness it allows us to play the role of victim. Injustice has happened to me and I want restitution! Tough. Life does not work that way and the faster we accept that the faster we move on toward getting the best life we can have.

Some people misunderstand fair to begin with. They think fair is everyone getting the same deal. That isn't fair, because everyone doesn't want or need the same thing. This is one of the big reasons why Communism didn't work, it was kinda fair (in theory), but it sucked for everyone.

Even if you understand fair to mean each person gets what they need or what they deserve it takes a 30 second glance at any newspaper to see, this life isn't anything close to fair. They could rename the continent of Africa as Unfair-land, because I don't know who there is getting a fair deal.

We teach children the concept of fair because it puts them on the path to be best human beings can become. Think about a time when you acted fairly, and you didn't have to. That was when you were truly at your best, but it was far from normal. It was beautiful, it is what we should all strive to become, but it is not the natural order of things.

So we should still teach our children to strive for fairness, equality, decency, kindness, justice and everything else that word represents, but we should stop hoping it will be as solid and constant as gravity.


Instead let us realize that life is so much better because it is not fair. If life were fair then you would spend all your days trapped trying to earn the gifts of your birth. You were born in America with no death squads around so poof you can never have a puppy, that would be fair.


We live in a world without fair, without limits. Because life isn't fair it is up to you to go and get what you want and you can fill your life with as much joy or sorrow as you can carry. The scales never have to balance. Don't wish for life to be fair, wish for it to be full. It sounds like the friend of the family's life was more full than most people's. She got less years but she got more life. Maybe life is kinda fair after all.