August 25, 2020 by Dymphna

T-Bomb: Why “it’s not fair” is dangerous

Truth Bomb Tuesday: A lot of people are having a rough trot of luck. But it’s dangerous to dwell on fairness.

Life is giving a lot of people a rough run of things right now.

Life can be brutal, blind and just unfair.

I know someone who spent months setting up a business in 2019. It was a great concept, she did all her research and due-diligence. She had banks falling over themselves to lend her money they liked the idea so much…

But she just happened to pick an industry exposed to Covid. And now she’s on the ropes, even thought it’s totally no fault of her own.

It’s totally unfair.

Maybe you’re in a similar boat. Maybe you’ve been employee of the month for eighteen months straight, but now it looks like you, and everyone else at the company, might be losing their jobs.

That’s not fair.

Or maybe you’re like someone I know, who quit their job and was about to take their family on a round the world trip. Now they’re unemployed and have been stuck in a 2-bedroom flat since March.

Brutal.

Now none of this is fair. Life doesn’t have a fair bone in its body. But don’t give in to the trap of dwelling on how unfair life is.

Don’t dwell on how unfair it is that you’ve been dealt such a bad hand, even though you did everything right and tried to be the best person you could be.

And don’t dwell on how unfair it is that you your brother-in-law’s business is booming right now, even though he’s a miserable sod who’s got no idea what he’s doing.

And don’t dwell on what would have been fair – how it would have been fair if you had been rewarded for your hard work, recognised for your talents, appreciated for your efforts.

It might all be true. In a just and fair universe, you would deserve all these things.

But it just doesn’t do you any good to dwell on it.

In fact, dwelling on how unfair life is, is actually an affirmation of powerlessness.

How’s that?

“It’s not fair” is an appeal to a higher power.

Maybe it’s a child complaining that their brother got a bigger scoop of icecream. “Mum! It’s not fair.”

Or maybe it’s someone complaining to the boss that they’re carrying more than their fair share. Or maybe it’s someone complaining to the ombudsman because they’ve been duded by a service provider.

“It’s not fair,” is an appeal to a higher power, and often an appeal of last resort. It’s something we go to when we run out of options.

And in that sense, it denies our own power – a power that is available to us in every situation and in every moment.

“It’s not fair,” affirms our subservience to a higher power. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to give up our power until they pry it from our cold dead hands.

So yes, life can be unfair. It can be totally unjust.

But don’t dwell on it. Don’t give up your power.

Just ask yourself what you can do right here and right now, to keep moving forward.

And let the children worry about fairness.

DB.