Some Thoughts on the Fairness of Life

I recently encountered a list of things kids will not learn in school, which were supposedly said by Bill Gates.  Regardless of who said them, they are fairly good points about how hard the adult world is compared to the teenage world and how you must struggle to thrive in it.  There was one particular point that caught my attention, though: “Life is not fair—get used to it.”  I can appreciate the intent of this statement.  I believe it’s trying to say that even though sometimes things just don’t work out or work out in a way that’s unnecessarily harsh or unjust, you can’t get hung up on it.  It would be helpful in encouraging someone who has had a tree fall on their house to put aside questions of “Why did this have to happen to me?” and concentrate instead on how to move forward.  Still, I never liked the idea of saying life is “unfair.”

Let’s look at what “unfair” actually means.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “marked by injustice, partiality, or deception.”  Each of these criteria seems to me to be marked with a deliberate intent, something which “life” does not have.  My example of a tree falling on your house fits with this idea even better than the idea that it happened because life is unfair.  The tree was not intending to do any damage; it’s a tree.  So, under the definition, it does not seem to be especially fair or unfair.  Indeed, if part of being fair is being impartial, then whether or not you somehow deserved it is not important.  It seems strange, but one can say life is completely fair in this respect.  What it all amounts to is that we don’t have control over some of the unfortunate things that happen to us, as they’re not some malicious intent against us that we can counterplot against or seek justice for afterward.  It’s something we just have to accept.

Some may say I’m nitpicking, that this distinction doesn’t really matter. However, if the purpose of the statement “life is not fair” is to make people accept the harsher ways things can work out, we must be careful that we only accept the things we can’t change, like the storms that knock trees on our houses.  Life is not anymore unfair than it is fair; it merely is.  People, on the other hand, are more than capable of being fair and unfair.  An unfair person has the intent prescribed by the word’s definition—the intent to harm, to favor, and to deceive and should be called out on his or her behavior.  Humans are capable of great injustices and while we can’t change human nature, I don’t believe it should just be accepted as an unfortunate part of life in the same way as the other example.  If we just blame life when people act unfairly, then we do not hold people accountable to their actions.   If we completely accept injustice, then we make true the saying, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”