No one said life was fair

[cottonwood513]

<p>((( ))) hugs to you and your two daughters. What a year for all of us.</p>

[kelsmom]

<p>Sistersunnie, my sympathies to you and your family. Hugs all around …</p>

<p>I lost my mom in March. Since that time, I have survived her birthday, my parents’ 55th anniversary, and Mother’s Day … all without Mom. S will graduate in June & I am secretly glad he doesn’t want an open house. My mom had to miss my D’s open house several years ago when she had a bad fall. It was the beginning of the end, and I remember feeling so sad then. If I had to do another open house without Mom, I don’t think I could handle it.</p>

<p>Life is NOT fair. We’ll make it through, though. Cling to what you HAVE, not just “here,” but in your heart. (And if you have a religious faith, it is very helpful to rely on that … I know it has helped me tremendously)</p>

[emeraldkity4]

<p>*Natural selection *as the biology teacher who gave the commencement address at my older daughters high school graduation pointed out, isn’t fair either.</p>

<p>

The First Corollary to the Fairness Postulate: Life isn’t supposed to be fair. When life was designed, fairness was not in the specs. Fairness is not a quality that life had in some Golden Age past, or that it might acquire in an Utopian future. Life falls down on all of us without regard to who we are or what we deserve.</p>

<p>A few years ago I went one evening to a meeting at the Temple de Hirsch Sinai. The speaker was the woman who tried to save Anne Frank and her family by hiding them in that attic. After she spoke, the audience asked her questions, and one question was, “If you could tell parents and teachers one thing you wished they would teach all our children, what would that be?” Her answer was this: “Teach our children that terrible things sometimes happen to people through no fault of their own. Otherwise children grow up thinking people deserve their misfortunes.”</p>

<p>I think you could argue from the first corollary to the fairness postulate that the basis of human compassion is a full understanding that life is not built fair and therefore we must be kind to each other.</p>

<p>The Second Corollary to the Fairness Postulate: The statement “life isn’t fair” is not a complaint. It makes as much sense to complain that life isn’t fair as to complain that grass isn’t orange. Really getting this postulate means not being disappointed in life because it fails to be fair.</p>

<p>Justice and compassion are another matter. These are qualities that HUMANS are supposed to have, and the statement “Humans are unjust” is a valid complaint. Forget fairness. Work for justice, and don’t require of life that it be fair for you to love it.

</p>

<p>It was a great speech.
My dad died when he was 43,- I was the oldest of three kids,- my mom was a widow at 40 and she died last winter @ 75. My kids didn’t have the same relationship with their grandparents that I had with mine & that is sad.
But while it is difficult, it makes things that much more treasured- for me any way, because I feel very conscious of what I do and say.
And I expect that the next decade will be better.
:)</p>