life is fair-- or not

 Yachats, Oregon March 2014

Once in awhile it seems good to stop and think about life values and philosophy. For me, there are so many things that can inspire that kind of thinking. I read someone talking about how unfair life was in a certain situation and i wrote the following.

One thing about fairness... life isn't. As best I know and have seen it, it's just the truth. We do bring on some of our own woes but often what happens is something we call fate. Seeing it go well for someone who doesn't deserve it based on faulty character and another suffer with losses or trying to do something good and finding it turned to dust definitely can be frustrating if we think there should be fairness. Maybe it is fairer than it looks, if we could see the cosmic picture, but my personal take on fair is don't look for it in how things work out. Live it as best you know and that's the only reward you can expect-- that you did it your way and true to what you believe is right.

If someone has a belief in a cosmic daddy, they will look for rewards and punishments to what has been done. it gives the believer comfort to think it all is balanced out eventually. I even wrote a novella (second in the series to come end of this month) called When Fates Conspire, which came from a dream, about purpose and fairness in life. It's a paranormal but based on things I've read and that dream.

The book indicates that life is fair but only in the long run and with the assumption that reincarnation is true. I know some think the fundamentalist Christian view of life is fair but to me it would not be. So a man lives an entire lifetime as a good person but at the very last he rejects Christ because he ceases to believe-- hell. Another man lives a life of hell raising and hurting others but at the very last he declares he believes-- heaven. 

The Old Testament view of God and eternity would seem even less fair. It indicates a god who can attack for reasons humans barely understand, who can ask a man to kill his son to prove he loves God, who tests a loyal man by putting him through hell but then it's okay because he later rewards him... Really, you want to believe in that version of fairness and God? It's more like the Greek gods than what I'd want to see as the god that really determines our fate.

So if reincarnation is true, regardless of the story of Jesus or not, then life can be fair but not in one lifetime. That would mean we learn and make right what we can and if we didn't in this lifetime, we will in another. For those who suffered seemingly to no reason, it would be fair because it would be their choice to have gone through that to grasp a deeper level of say compassion. Reincarnation would enable life fairness-- nothing else really does.

And even with reincarnation, we cannot worry about whether it's fair. We should concentrate on learning our lessons and understand that we can't make right a terrible wrong with a few pretty words. It will take recompense. We should not look for life being fair to determine how much joy we can receive from living. 

If we have been blessed-- good. If we have suffered-- hope it had a purpose we cannot see. But live each day as best we can with what level of truth we have to date. Then fairness doesn't matter.