Life is not Fair

Raising four kids, born in a five ​year span of time, is my best bet for receiving an award. I have not decided if it is an award for courage and bravery or merely a survivor award. But, I do feel an award is appropriate. As I might consider an acceptance speech for such an award, it would be full of the mantras I repeated over and over again to each of my children from the time they were finally in pull-ups all the way through to them having their own families to raise. I have heard my self say these same statements under my breath to no one in particular during the year 2020 with a world wide pandemic, political unrest and upheaval, and the rise of the most heartbreaking pieces of humanity with human trafficking, opioid abuse and homelessness. 

But, one of such mantras rises above all the others. Life is not Fair. Life has never been fair and it never will be fair. Like a five year old whose ice cream cone landed upside down in the dirt, you can scream at your sibling who is still licking the deliciousness on top of a cone, “It’s not fair!” But it won’t fix a thing. As a mom I can step in an demand that the ice cream endowed child give half of his cone to the one whose ice cream is rapidly melting in the dirt. But, that is also not fair. I can give you 10,000 similar scenarios that range from one child having better math skills and receiving accolades from simply having better mathematical aptitudes to one falling out of the back of a pick up truck and breaking their arm and requiring multiple surgeries being forced to hang out indoors while the others all play outside. As parents if we worked to teach fairness we could never ever level out the scales. Instead we taught empathy and kindness.
 
Back to the ice-cream. If mom or dad steps in and cuts the whole cone in half and the one sibling who managed to exercise some skill in walking and licking a cone at the same time loses half of their ice cream because another sibling tripped, it will not endear one sibling to another. Nope, I likely caused a bit of resentment and division. If, on the other hand, I helped the lucky one see how it might feel to walk along without ice cream there is a chance they will decide it would be much better it would be to share than to be stared at with longing eyes of your sibling as each lick is taken.
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I see a country fighting for fairness and a demand that our government make it fair. It won’t work and every parent knows this to be true. Fighting for fairness causes division, resentment and bitterness. Fighting for freedom raises up everyone in it’s reach. 
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In a free society justice rises, empathy rises, the pursuit of happiness rises. In a free society innovation rises, industry rises and education rises. And in a free society we have a fair shot at one sibling not only sharing his ice-cream cone but also designing a better cone where ice cream doesn’t topple off of the top with a little stumble.
 
That’s All, Gwen