On Fairness

Why is it that one of the first phrases a child masters is, "it's not fair"?  All 3 of my older kids learned it early on and they still put it to good use.  My 2 year old is following suit.  On Saturday's, we have the rule that they can't play with friends until their jobs are done.  Almost every single week, one of my two older boys will get his jobs done quickly and then head out to play.  Without fail, every time this happens, the other one will throw a fit and point out how, "it's not fair" that his brother gets to do something fun on Saturday and he does not.  It doesn't matter how many times I point out that his brother got up and did his jobs, and that's why he gets to go play.  In his mind, it's just not fair.  Never mind that there is still dirty underwear and candy wrappers crammed down the side of his bed.  Pay no attention to that.

As parents, we spend a lot of our years teaching our kids what it is to be fair.  We teach them that conforming to rules and standards isn't only a moral obligation but a good way to keep life predictable -  work hard in school?  You'll get good grades.  Treat people with kindness?  You'll be well liked.  Practice something you want to be good at?  You'll get better at it.  By the time we're all grown up, we have a concrete understanding of this concept of fairness.  We don't really feel the need to cry, "it's not fair" anymore (unless we see our kid totally get pushed in a basketball game and the ref calls it a travel - ahem).  So why then, when something hard like an illness or an accident is dropped into our lives, is it our knee jerk reaction to say, "it's not fair"?  

Honestly, I believe it's a very human reaction.  Suddenly, the rules in this game of life have been changed and nobody bothered to tell us.  But the truth is, fairness doesn't apply to the game of life.  How many times have you said to your kids, "too bad, life isn't fair"?  The phrase is rather cliche, but it's very true.  If life was fair, there wouldn't be children who's lives are cut short because of terminal illnesses.  If life was fair, there wouldn't be car accidents that leave people disabled for the rest of their lives.  If life was fair, all the rapists and murderers in the world would be riddled with cancer.  If life was fair, people like Dad and Sam wouldn't have to go through all this crap.  But life isn't fair.

As most of you probably know, my parents lost a 4 month old baby to SIDS about 30 years ago.  I was only 3 when it happened, so I don't have many clear memories of that time.  With children of my own now, I feel sick when I think about what it must have been like for Mom and Dad.  But Mom recently told me about an experience she had about a year after they lost their little Eliot.  She said that at the time, she was still struggling with the, "it's not fair" thing.  She went to speak with a counselor because these thoughts just weren't going away.  As they began talking, she felt herself becoming increasingly upset.  It didn't take long for her frustration to bubble over and finally she asked him the question that was so deeply haunting her.  "Why?  Why me?"  And this is how the counselor replied. "Why not you?  What makes you think that you should be exempt from having to go through heartbreaking experiences in life?"  This answer changed the way she viewed life's challenges from that point on.    

I really don't believe there's a reason that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.  Things just happen because we are mortal beings living in an imperfect world.  I think the need we feel to want to blame something or someone (usually God) isn't because we believe that there's actually a culprit out there.  It's because we think that maybe placing blame on something other than bad luck will possibly lessen the pain we're feeling.  It's understandable.  We've had "fairness" pounded into us from day 1.  But when life gets all screwy on us, fairness becomes that elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 

All of this really only leaves us with two options.  We either go into defense mode in an effort to protect ourselves from feeling deceived by God, or we go into silver lining mode (it's a mode, I swear) by putting our fate in the hands of God and acknowledging little miracles along the way.  Mom and Dad?  They're silver lining people.  From the very beginning of this thing, they put their trust in the Lord and knew that they'd be able to handle whatever came to be.  They know that there's something bigger at play here.  That's not to say that it isn't daunting at times for them to think about what they're in for in the coming months.  Let me tell you, daunting doesn't even begin to cover it.  But if you know them at all, you know that they will continue to be on the hunt for silver linings.  If I've learned one thing from all of this, it's that miracles happen every single day, but they're not always handed to you on a silver platter.  Sometimes you really have to look for them.  It's not easy, but it's so worth it.

How does fairness tie in to all of this?  It doesn't.  That's the point.  Fairness simply doesn't apply to life sometimes.  But you wanna know what it does apply to?  My kids being able to play on Saturday.  Someday I hope my son can wrap his head around the concept of fairness.  But until then, I'm happy to dole out the injustices.