It’s not fair!
I think we all pass through a phase as we grow up where we become very concerned about fairness. Many a teenager espouses the argument that “It’s not fair!” Invariably, the response is “No one said life was fair.”
But the world is fair, in a funny sort of way. Fairness is not doled out on a one-to-one basis with our actions. Sometimes we do bad things, and we get away with it. In fact, we may even be rewarded for it. Other times we do good things, but get punished. Take as an example the thief who steals a thousand dollars and gets away with it. Taken by itself, this bad dead gets rewarded. Of course, I believe if that person continues to steal, eventually it will catch up to them. The same goes for the OBGYN who works tirelessly and honestly doing the best work possible to help deliver healthy babies, only to be repeatedly sued for malpractice.
Over time, however, I do believe that people who do good have more good things happen. And people who don’t do good, have more bad things happen.
It is a naive view of our lives is to think of it as tomato soup, where every bite is pretty much exactly the same as the last; so that if you season the soup with good deeds, then your every bite should be sweet and enjoyable. But our lives aren’t like tomato soup, instead, our lives are more akin to stew. Sometimes we get a spoonful of beefy-goodness, other times we get a rotten carrot. Like a good stew, the more good things we put into the pot, the more likely we are to get a tasty bite out of it. And conversely, if we fill it with rotten apples, then our next bite is likely to be less than savory. Just because the last thing you put in the pot was a good potato in doesn’t mean your next bite won’t be hunk of fat.
We live in a world filled with immediacy. We all want instant gratification for the things we do. Few of us have the patience to sow our seeds in the fall so that after the winter there will be crops popping up in the spring. But the world doesn’t change simply because we want it to. Our expectations do not change reality, they only change the way we perceive reality. Being responsible and being happy require us not to change the world, but to align our own expectations with the way things really are. A big part of that is recognizing that life sometimes cuts us short, and sometimes overpays. In the long run, you’ll get out of it what you put into it.