Is Life unfair - 1

Every day, we have abundant opportunity to recognize injustice, on scales large and small, in our own lives and the lives of people we love. You could find out you make less than someone else in the same job. You could lose a promotion to someone else who is far less qualified. You could lose a court case when it feels obvious someone else was in the wrong.

You could discover that a friend of yours is losing his/her savings because his/her accountant mismanaged money. You could learn that someone you trusted to care for your mother took advantage of her good nature. You can find out that your sister lost her home because of predatory lending.

And this doesn’t even touch upon the massive injustices happening all over the world, far outside the scope of our everyday experience. Life isn’t always fair. Whether it’s self-preservation, basic human decency, or a combination of both, we want to change that.

In some cases, we can. We are not powerless, and we don’t have to simply accept every injustice as an unavoidable part of life. We do, however, need to accept that our response to perceived wrongs affects our ability to right them. 

We clearly have no choice about how we come into this world, we have little choice early in life, but as we grow older choices abound. While we have no control over the beginning of our life, the overwhelming majority of us have the ability to influence the outcomes we attain. Fair is a state of mind, and most often, an unhealthy state of mind.

In business, in politics, and in life, most of us are beneficiaries of the outcomes we have contributed to. Our station in life cannot, or at least should not, be blamed on our parents, our teachers, our pastors, our government, or our society – it’s largely based on the choices we make, and the attitudes we adopt.

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