Life’s Not Fair

It’s 2:34am, and I should be asleep.

Obviously, I’m not.

My mind is racing, like it has been for days. So much so that the stress, lack of sleep, lack of taking care of myself landed me at the walk-in clinic this afternoon with a diagnosis of double ear infections (one side pretty nasty) and a referral to the ENT.

I won’t deny that part of the reason I’m awake is the pain meds/antibiotic/steroid shot combo. But I’ll definitely take the pain relief over sleep.

Anyway. Back to the point.

All this mind racing has me thinking, reflecting, and maybe I should, maybe I shouldn’t say it. But at this point, I’m just going to…..bear with me, it may—okay, it will be long. Props if you make it to the end.

Every family has their mottos, their sayings, their words to live by. We had a couple in our family, but in the last eight months, one has stood out more than the others. It was probably my daddy’s favorite, and if you spent any time around my house or my dad, I’m sure you heard him say it:

Life’s not fair, and people don’t act right.

The older my brother and I got, the more we detested those words. Dad would start “life’s not fair,” to which we would finish in chorus “and people don’t act right.”

I would get so annoyed…of course, we knew life wasn’t fair! But that doesn’t mean we didn’t need to vent/complain everyone once in a while!

Or did we?

Looking back, was it really every once in a while “it’s not fair!”? Or did we complain about every little thing? Things that were simply out of our control, out of our parents’ control, things that were just a part of life?

Lately, it’s been on repeat. Because it’s true.

Life’s not fair.

And people don’t act right.

BUT WHO SAID LIFE WAS FAIR?

I’ll wait.

Should it be? Could it be? Yes? Maybe? I don’t know.

I know it’s not equitable. I see it daily in education. Then, if you take a step back, you’d see that it’s not equitable anywhere we are. But there is a difference in fair and equitable. Don’t agree with me? Fine. I’m not here to debate that. We can do that another time.

But fair. Oh my stars. Life is not fair. If life was fair, my daddy would not have died 3 days after I turned 29. If life was fair, my son would have had the opportunity to have had more than a few visits with his poppy. And my daughter and niece would have had more than a few years. If life was fair, there wouldn’t be a need for the ACEs test. If life was fair, there wouldn’t be pandemics, cancer, addiction, earthquakes, mental illness, hurricanes, Alzheimer’s, fires, bullying, inequality, hate crime, hunger, poverty, rape, and the list goes on and on and on.

If life was fair, Jesus wouldn’t have had to die on the cross for you and me.

If life was fair, oh my stars, if life was fair.

But it’s not.

So here we are. To the second part. The hard part:

And people don’t act right.

UGH. If this one doesn’t sting, then you should probably take a closer look in the mirror.

I’m not perfect. You aren’t perfect. None of us are perfect. We may strive to be, and it may kill us when we aren’t. But the bottom line is we mess up. We say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. Somewhere along the way, we are going to screw up something. It’s just human nature.

But guess what?!

IT’S OKAY.

Yeah. That’s right. It’s okay.

We’re all jerks from time to time. We’re all the villain in someone else’s story at some point in our lives.

And yet the best part about this life is we don’t have to stay that way.

When I went off to college, I struggled A LOT. I sunk into a deep depression, and I had a hard time coming out of it. At one point, daddy and I were talking about life, and he reminded me that “life’s not fair.” To which I responded, “and people don’t act right.” However, he surprised me with, “but Sweetpea, you gotta love them anyway, find good in the world, and show them how wonderful you are.”

A few years ago, my dad’s death finally caught up to me. And I began to grieve. I had been focusing on being what everyone else needed, on giving every ounce of me for years that I didn’t really didn’t know what was left of me. I was in a deep, dark pit of my own hell, and the whole world screamed “not fair!!”

I tried a few things with my doctor, and as a last resort, I agreed to therapy in August 2019. I honestly believe it’s how I survived being sent home in March of 2020 to teach from home and how I managed to make it through last school year.

I needed to be reminded that people NEED to be loved and that there IS good in this world. And that I AM good enough for them. Beyond that, I needed then and now to believe it.

There are still hard days. The last week being proof of that. But I have to remind myself people are just people that need to feel heard, to feel valued, to feel loved.

So yeah. Life’s not fair. And people don’t act right.

Get over it.

It’s not going to change.

Want to make a difference? Want to make the world a better place?

Love them anyway. Show them the good in the world. And show them how wonderful you are.