From childhood, when I began to have agency, I was strident about the wrongs I saw in life, from the small things to the big things. Hypocrisy and deliberate wrongdoing grated me to my bones. And I saw it everywhere. Over time I got used to seeing people succeeding who cheated or people who hurt others have no consequences. That left me with a disillusioned number one rule – life is not fair.
Parenting first taught me something important in a message I formed to the future I wouldn’t necessarily be a part of.
When my oldest was little and forming his moral identity, I faced his big, beautiful, open-hearted eyes staring into mine welled in frustration. This filled us both equally with frustration and anxiety. I had to reach into my higher self to quell his despair. For me it was about speaking truth in the world – the number one rule: life’s not fair. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t try to make it fair.
The message I wanted to convey in a simple easy way was… we have a choice to succumb to the immoral or to take the higher road and make the world a little bit better by being fair to ourselves and others, even when nobody was looking. I think I conveyed that throughout my parenting years enough times. That would be a question for them and the people they have become.
In the present, there are moments when life feels almost insulting in its unfairness. Good people get sick. Hard workers lose opportunities. Hearts break without warning. Plans collapse for reasons no one can explain. And in those moments, the usual advice = stay positive, everything happens for a reason, just keep going – can feel painfully small and hollow.
The truth is, life is not fair. It never has been. Fairness would mean that effort always leads to reward, kindness always comes back around, and pain only visits people who somehow deserve it. But human experience proves otherwise. Sometimes life gives us burdens we did not choose, losses we did not earn, and seasons we would never have volunteered to carry.
I’m asking myself now, is it supposed to be. I’ve had some great things come from unexpected, unearned losses. Sometimes the things that did not work out opened the way for unexpected things that ended up being way better over time.
Unfairness Is Not the Same as Meaninglessness
What my decades have taught me is that when something unfair happens, it is natural to ask. “Why me?” That question comes from a very human place. We want the world to make sense. We want the math to balance. We want suffering to have a clear cause and a clean explanation. But some pain does not arrive with an answer attached.
Still, unfairness is not the same as meaninglessness. A hard chapter can be undeserved and still become part of a meaningful story. A wound can be real and still not define the whole person. A disappointment can change the road ahead without making the destination worthless.
Resilience Is Built in Small Decisions
Resilience is often mistaken for toughness, as if being resilient means nothing hurts, nothing shakes us, and nothing leaves a mark. But real resilience is not the absence of pain or its sheer endurance. It is a decision to keep showing up while carrying it.
Most resilience is quiet. It looks like getting out of bed when staying there would be easier. It looks like answering one message, taking one walk, washing one dish, making one appointment, or choosing not to give up for one more day. These small acts may not feel heroic in the moment, but they are evidence that something within us is still reaching toward life.
Resilience does not mean pretending life is fair. It means refusing to let unfairness become the only truth we live by. It means making room for grief without surrendering all our hope to it. It means believing that even if life takes something from us, it may still offer beauty, love, laughter, purpose, and unexpected grace along the way.
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Our Humble Road 