FAIR

Is life fair--what do you think?

Definitely not.

Unpredictable, joyful, sad, beautiful, not so beautiful, frustrating, frightening, but not fair.

Carol

Life is fair. People aren't.

Abe,

Expand, please--all people? some people?
Which people--parents? siblings? offspring?

Thanks!

Alice, it all depends on your expectations!

I have never had a bad day in my life...What a ride!
Fair depends what side of the issue you're on.

There is no life without people, unless there was a world with only animals. Of course, people act like animals all too often and it can be tough to tell the difference.

Everything in life we get from people: Love, work, play, hate, passion, dissent, pleasure, and the list goes on. If everyone was fair, life would be. But people aren't fair, and therefore life isn't. "To thyself be true" means that "I" come first. My family comes before my neighbors. We can decide to play it fair but to do that, it takes interaction with people. Sometimes we win and sometimes we lost. It just isn't fair.

Abe,

How about the situations where people are not involved?
There is an avalanche, your car is buried--You freeze to death...

You fall and break your leg.

Your spouse dies.

Your sewer backs up-your neighbors doesn't.

Your dog sickens and dies.

Or you get cancer or Parkinson's?

Carol

Your breath is free...take it in deep...if others are unfair, it is better to lose then to hide from the harm.

Richard Bach (Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions: the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah) wrote a book called Nothing by Chance, which related his own adventures during a summer when he and a group of friends took time off to barnstorm. He spent the summer flying his 1929 antique bi-plane onto hay fields and offering plane rides to the locals, charging just enough to pay for food and gas. It was, according to the book, an exhilarating summer, and he ended it feeling he had achieved a life-long dream. Only, on his way home, a truck struck the trailer carrying his precious plane and wrecked it. He was distraught. Over the next several months, word got out, and people he didn't even know started sending him the obsolete, 1929 airplane parts that he needed to rebuild the plane. Eventually, it was completely rebuilt, and he took it out and flew it again. On that first flight after the wreck, he thought the words that became the closing lines of the book: "The lesson that had been so hard to find, so difficult to learn, came quick and clear and simple. The reason for problems is to overcome them....Problems for overcoming. Freedom for proving. And, as long as we believe in our dream, nothing by chance."

Just one perspective.

Ann

Bravo

I believe we create our reality. Supposing that's true, life is 100% fair because it is what we decided to experience.

Malcolm

Believing we create our realities can put a guilt trip on people who no way created what life has given them, either crashed airplanes, cancer or any other illness.

But it is what we do with these serious difficulties. Do we crumble, and give up, or write books, play music or plant a garden?

I have a friend who recently experienced a fall down a flight of stairs. She said, "Here we are, two ladies who have once again avoided death trying to figure out what to do with the rest of our lives."

Carol

Never expect fairness and you won't be disappointed. Life is a series of breaks, some good, some bad.

Sometimes adversity is just a new door opening up.

There was a time when I was considered a competent counselor and underwent significant training. Through it all, one teaching stood out, "The first step toward insanity is the belief that life is and should be fair. The first step to mental health is the realization that it is not fair and not meant to be fair. It is our response to life's twists and turns according to our unique characteristics that determines the quality of our existence."

Is life fair? Whose life? In what place and under what circumstances? Who am I to judge? I am but a little speck in the universe, part of something so great and unimaginable that fairness is unmeasureable.

A colleague and I were flying small planes all over Florida one year giving workshops. She was a tiny little thing with a voice to match; I had the voice that carried and always adjusted her mike. We always poured over our ratings after an event, worrying if there were some less than stellar.

I loved our trips and our gigs. Then, I broke my leg on a ramp. "This isn't fair," a part of me screamed. "How could my trips be ruined?" Instead, I managed to hobble up those plane steps and keep our appointments, in spite of the unfairness of my inconvenience.

Not only did I break my leg, but my colleague also had a sore throat that weakened her already tiny voice. So unfair!

We did our presentation, me adjusting her mike and almost repeating some of her part; she carrying our stuff.

After the presentation, we poured over the ratings. They were the best yet; we knew the presentation was mediocre at best. We had the sympathy factor in play. Thus, we weren't judged "fairly" for our performance.

I decided the next gig she would break her leg, and I would get the sore throat. Our season ended and didn't start again. We never forgot "the sympathy factor."

Malcolm,

I hear what you are saying, but I wonder if it isn't closer to say that we co-create our reality. We aren't in this alone. We are part of a universe of beings who are all interdependent, and whose realities often coincide. Other people are involved in our reality, as we are in theirs.

Carol,

I don't think that constructed reality is about guilt or blame.If we have some choice in what we experience in our lives, we might be considered responsible for some of the results. It took me a long time to learn that being responsible wasn't the same thing as being guilty. It isn't about carrying that burden, I don't think.

Ann

In the past year I have been the object of sympathy.

Last night a woman in an organization I belong to called me. She said she worried about me and thought about me a lot. She just honestly expressed her feelings. I thanked her for calling, thinking of me, and praying for me.

Others rave over how good I look. I must have looked terrible!

Dk wrote:

"The first step to mental health is the realization that it (life) is not fair and not meant to be fair. It is our response to life's twists and turns according to our unique characteristics that determines the quality of our existence."

I do not believe I did anything to become well—medical help, a great husband and prayer is what got me where I am now. But I responded to the twists and turns and I say, "now what?"

Ann,

I don't think I was in any way responsible for getting cancer a second time, but I was responsible for how I dealt with it. Now I am responsible for what I do with it.

Carol

Quote :

Ann,

I don't think I was in any way
responsible for getting cancer a second time, but I was responsible for
how I dealt with it. Now I am responsible for what I do with it.

Carol

Carol,

To borrow a phrase from Alice, when you are right you are so right.

If I don't say this stuff very well, it's because I don't understand it well enough to find the precise words. I believe we all play a part in constructing the reality we live in, but we are not isolated individuals, and our perception is very limited and incomplete. I don't think any of us has the power to create our own illnesses, but, as you said, we can take responsibility in helping our bodies to heal. You did not accept an "inevitable fate." You took control of your destiny, found other opinions and diagnoses and treatments that worked for you. I have great admiration for you and Alice and anyone who approaches life and its unfair conditions and turns them into victories.

To borrow from another of Alice's threads, we are all flawed imperfections striving to make our way through a world we cannot completely understand. We can strive toward an ideal, but we will never completely get there, because it is an ideal.

Ann

When I traveled in Greece, I asked the tour guide, "What happened to the models for these statues?" All the statues were of men and women of perfect bodies and physical features, some quite statuesque. I didn't see any people in Greece that resembled the statues at all.

The tour guide said there were two possibilities: 1) the artists carved from their vision of perfection, very different from their own selves and actually too perfect to be real - an unattainable image of gods and goddesses on earth or 2) the race of people that modeled were enslaved and carried away or slaughtered.

I prefer choice #1.

alj wrote:

To borrow from another of Alice's threads, we are all flawed imperfections striving to make our way through a world we cannot completely understand. We can strive toward an ideal, but we will never completely get there, because it is an ideal.

Ann

You express these things well. Writing about them can help with understanding.

The issue we have is what we can control and what we can't, and then what we do with what we can, kind of like Serenity Prayer.

Carol