Thank you all for the birthday wishes and comments.  I have had a good day and am looking forward to watching basketball tonight.  I hope you have enjoyed the beautiful  day we have had in Kansas!

A Life Without Fairness

Fairness – noun – the state, condition, or quality of being fair, or free from bias or injustice; evenhandedness.

I have been told many times lately that “life just doesn’t seem fair sometimes.” Of course they are talking about Tammy’s cancer, our life, and how we respond to it.  I have written a few times that I do not believe in fairness and have wanted to take the time at some point to elaborate on what “Living a life without fairness” means to me.  I decided that my birthday would be a great time to take that on.  Maybe I can help you understand what my thoughts are on this, and maybe you will see the, “why” to my madness.

I would like to start out with saying that “fairness” is a human Idea.  There is no fairness in the natural world.  In order to have “justice” there must be a fairness component.  So I have some issues with “justice” also, but that would be a whole different topic.  Humans have evolved enough that we have decided that in order to have order we need rules to live by and somehow we have to decide how to be fair to everyone involved.  My problem with fairness is what happens when our human rules don’t supersede natural rules, which happens a lot more that we think.  Our everyday lives are filled with issues that we have no control over.  These issues are guided by natural rules.  These are things that no matter how hard we try we cannot change.  We say that life is unfair, we get upset, and want to set up more rules to make life fairer.  The most obvious example for me would be cancer.  Cancer has been unfair to us; life has been unfair to us by hitting us with this.  Another example would be who my parents are.  If life was fair, I would be moving into the White House as we speak.  Maybe if I was Italian I might not have to worry about getting a sunburn as much because my skin tone would be a little darker.  Maybe if I didn’t have such a heavy bone structure I would not have to worry about all this weight I’ve been packing on the last few years.  You get my point.  Most of the things in our lives we cannot change, nor control.  Fairness is an Ideal, not a reality.  So I choose not to believe in it.  I choose to believe that life will never be fair to me.  What I believe is that I will be fair in life.  That is my Ideal. That is something that I can attain, it is something real.

I’m sure you are thinking what is the difference Casey?  Well, for one thing my ideal is action not reaction.  In other words, I can take actions to make sure that I am being fair to the situation or I can react to the bias and injustice of the situation.  Cancer is unfair!  So what, everyone’s life is unfair.  My choice is to believe that no matter how hard life beats me down, how unfair life might be, I will be fair to you in how I talk with you, interact with you, help you, touch you, and love you.  That is my human ideal for “fairness.”  That is something I can control.