Life isn't Fair

How do you get used to that?

Published on March 7, 2006 By JillUser In Philosophy

The death of Dana Reeve really touched me deeply. That family suffered such hardship, such tragedy. Their young son has learned the 'life isn't fair' lesson in a very brutle way. How can such wonderful people suffer such tragedy when so many horrible people sail blissfully through life?

This is a question I simply can't get passed. I have seen it day in and day out during my 35yrs of life. Life can be so unfair. It just doesn't make sense.

I have had an extremely fortunate life. I have been blessed in so many ways. I have suffered very little loss so far. That worries me. It causes me to feel like the other shoe will drop at any time. I'm a worry wart and can't help it.

Everything happens for a reason just doesn't cut it for me in cases like Dana Reeve. Also, I was reading about a local benefit that will take place to raise money for a poor baby girl of only 2yrs old who has cancerous growths on her brain stem and spinal cord. Why does she have to suffer like that?

It just makes no sense.

**This is in the philosophy section. Please do not comment with scripture quotation. I don't mind you crediting or blaming God for such things, just don't get preachy.

Comments (Page 3)

JillUser

on Mar 10, 2006

KFC and Baker, no offense but nothing either of you said addresses the baby who is born and knows nothing but pain and misery for a couple of years before dying. Nothing anyone could say about God and the natural balance of things will ever explain that.

Baker, I know plenty of elderly people who are absolutely fine with death. Heck, I know plenty of people who at least got to see their children through to adulthood who feel like if they died tomorrow they will feel as though they lived a full life. I simply can't believe that a loving God who has some great plan would kill off a bus full of Middle school honor students to make way for hundreds of poor children to be born into poverty, abuse, violence, hunger, disease, etc.

I am not condemning death Baker. I am condemning ridiculous amounts of suffering.

The question shouldn't be "Will I die?" or "When will I die?" or "How will I die?" The question really should be....."When I die, where will I go?"

KFC, I don't think anyone asks the first question and if you have never asked all of those other questions at some time I think you are either lying or not very bright (sounds harsh but I think that was a pretty simplisitc, unrealistic statement). After all, has there ever been a human who doesn't wonder what happens when you die? If you are a parent, how could you not ask to live long enough to raise your children?

I don't fear being dead but I do fear dying an agonizing death and putting my family through undue pain. I fear not being here for my children until they are able to stand on their own. It breaks my heart to think about Chris and Dana's 13yr old son. Being a teen is hard enough under ideal circumstances. He lost the two people who meant the most to him in this world within a very short period of his emerging life. I can't help but feel that if anyone doesn't see that as unfair they must be either unempathetic or cold hearted.

bakerstreet

on Mar 10, 2006

"I am not condemning death Baker. I am condemning ridiculous amounts of suffering."

Why condemn it at all? I think the expectation of something other than suffering and death is what makes us so bitter. What makes people any different than any other creature on earth? Babies animals die, baby people die. Pain and misery are the body's reaction to something. Sometimes I think our expectations are like allergies; extreme reactions to a normal environment that we'd be better off without.

'Unfair' to me is something unusual. As awful as it seems to us, there's nothing unusual about pain, misery, and death. If anything would be unusual it would be getting through life without it. We are like bugs floating on a leaf in the middle of a river. Had we been born in on another continent we might be getting shot at, or dying of hunger, or being tortured to death for our beliefs.

So, frankly, if there is anything unusual it is living in the extreme comfort and safety that we have come to expect. The problem is we have come to expect it so much, nature is unusual to us. Studying history has given me a different point of view, I guess. Our comfort and safety are now so unrealistically 'fair', I can't even imagine this will last, much less get even better.

JillUser

on Mar 10, 2006

Baker, are you saying if your child was born, you soon found out he/she had spinal cancer, you would just say "Hey, that's natural"? Hatred it is natural, violence is natural, pain is natural. And are you saying that what happened to the Reeve family is a "usual" occurence? I will have to agree to fervently disagree with you on this subject Baker.

JillUser

on Mar 10, 2006

JillUser

on Mar 10, 2006

Baker, are you saying if your child was born, you soon found out he/she had spinal cancer, you would just say "Hey, that's natural"?

Hatred is natural, violence is natural, pain is natural. If these things aren't "bad", then I don't know what is. And are you saying that what happened to the Reeve family is a "usual" occurence?

I will have to agree to fervently disagree with you on this subject Baker.

Babies animals die, baby people die.

Yeah, and adult animals kill and sometimes eat their babies, should I expect that for people too? I don't see the logic in this statement.

JillUser

on Mar 10, 2006

BTW, those first two comments were the results of timeouts and then errors that wouldn't let me edit them.

Chaos Manager

on Mar 10, 2006

JillUser,

I think it all can be summed up in the phrase "Shit happens."

Not exactly a politically correct answer, but that's what it looks like from here.

I see a balance existing between good, bad, and indifferent results (notice, not intentions, but results) in what goes on in our lives. This doesn't mean that when a bad thing (new husband paralyzed, for example) happens in a Person A's life that something good (winning the lottery, say) will happen in Person A's life. That good thing might happen in Person B's life (or even Person AABCABAA's life somewhere on the other side of the planet). But, that good thing WILL happen.

A good example of this - 11 years ago this month, I lost my grandfather due to cancer. He'd been dealing with it for years. A month (and change) later, my oldest son was born. Bad -> Good -> Balance.

I lost my grandmother in October. In this case, the same event provided the Balance - our loss was bad, but the fact that she no longer suffered, and had lived a good/full life, balanced each other out.

Chaos Manager

on Mar 10, 2006

Looking at that ... It's something that I can see, and understand. When it becomes personal, or the bad things happen to the same individual, then it becomes harder to accept and rationalize.

Unfortunately, there are too many things that I've experienced that are hard to rationalize. Too many encounters with experiences outside the realm of science and corporeal reality. Accepting some of them is a little difficult, as well.

JillUser

on Mar 10, 2006

I hear ya Chaos. "Shit happens" indeed.

bakerstreet

on Mar 10, 2006

" Baker, are you saying if your child was born, you soon found out he/she had spinal cancer, you would just say "Hey, that's natural"? "

No, I'd be destroyed. We have a strong instict for survival and procreation. I couldn't claim it wasn't natural, though, nor can you. 6 in every thousand babies die in the US, it's well over 100 out of a thousand in some parts of the world.

Babies with cancer rarely make the news. If no babies died, that would be unnatural.

"Hatred is natural, violence is natural, pain is natural. If these things aren't "bad", then I don't know what is."

I live with a chronic illness and my own share of pain. Is my life 'bad'? Is it worse than someone without the illness? This illness makes me who I am. If this illness is 'bad', then I am the product of 'badness'.

Eventually unless a cure is found my guts will continue rotting away and I'll walk around with a sack on my hip, and even further down the road I'll just run out of them altogether and die. Would I prefer to live to a ripe old age? Sure. Do I consider it 'bad' if I don't? Not really.

"Yeah, and adult animals kill and sometimes eat their babies, should I expect that for people too? I don't see the logic in this statement."

You expect the absence of pain and suffering, therefore when it comes it is unfair. Pain and suffering and death are so common, though, that the state we live in as US citizens is unfair in our ABSENCE of horrors. The Reeves son will have a life far better than 99.99999% of the people who ever walked the earth. Fair is relative.

I see nothing, nowhere, that gives me the impression I should expect anything more than what you consider 'bad'. You find it more logical to expect the world to be something other than it is?

JillUser

on Mar 10, 2006

Fair is relative.

Absolutely.

You find it more logical to expect the world to be something other than it is?

No, logic has nothing to do with that expectation. Do I think it would be more fair if it were somthing different? Yes.

Baker, I am truly sorry for the disease you have to deal with. I am happy for you that you seem to have come to terms and have such an acceptance of the way things are. I don't and nothing you have said has gotten me any closer. To accept things as simply fair and natural isn't in me. But then again, I am not religious like you so perhaps religion and that sort of acceptance depend upon each other.

I do appreciate your comments. Just because they didn't change my overall outlook doesn't mean I didn't take anything away from them.

KFC Kickin For Christ

on Mar 10, 2006

Jill

From a Christian perspective when I see stuff happen I don't blame God for these things. Yes, he allows things to happen but I do believe there is a plan going on that only he knows. We live in a sinful world and because of that, bad things happen to us. From a deist perspective you should not blame God either right? You believe he created the world and let us be. You can't have it both ways.

Why do little babies suffer and die? I don't think any of us have a real answer here. But I do know that when Lazarus died (too young) and he was asked Jesus said it was for the glory of God. When he cured the blind man, he gave the same reply when asked why this man was blind from birth. For God's glory. I think of Fanny Crosby also. For the glory of God.

My hunch is there is more to the story than what you and I see from the headlines.

I also believe that everything that happens shapes us into who we are today. While I don't like going through trials or painful experiences they do make me the person I am now and I wouldn't trade that for anything. For me when I go through anything it brings me closer to God not away from him.

I have a hunch that God has a great plan for that 13 year old boy. If you go back thru history and read some of the giants in those times, almost all went through very trying times. Beauty out of ashes.

I also believe there are worst things than physical death.

KFC Kickin For Christ

on Mar 10, 2006

Fair is relative.

When people say to me that God is unfair. I say they are right. He is unfair. After Adam and Eve did their little rebellious thing in the garden following the enemy of God and after all the adultery of his people to other gods throughout history, I think if I were him I'd have wiped them all out.

Instead what does he do? Dies for us because he loves us and desires to have us love Him in return. He died so that we might live.

God doesn't give us what we deserve. Therefore, he is not fair. Not at all.

bakerstreet

on Mar 10, 2006

"When he cured the blind man, he gave the same reply when asked why this man was blind from birth."

That explains the ones that were healed, but doesn't quite address all the rest. I find it difficult to believe that any perfect being would inflict suffering on another creature to enhance its glory. If a person were to do it they'd be a monster, and I grant God a lot more perfection than I grant people.

JillUser

on Mar 10, 2006

From a deist perspective you should not blame God either right?

When did I ever say I blamed God? Saying that something isn't fair or that shit happens for no good reason has absolutely nothing to do with God. Also, deists believe there is a God but don't know. I don't believe in the God that you believe in. I believe we don't have a God that is watching over every little thing. I don't believe he has a hand in all that happens. I think we are basically like a software program. We were created and set in motion. Bugs/problems occur not because got 'wanted' them too but they are just how our program plays out.

My hunch is there is more to the story than what you and I see from the headlines.

What more would you need to know to have it seem any more fair? Dana wasn't even a smoker!

I also believe there are worst things than physical death.

You have every right to believe that. Like I said, I am not afraid of death. My problem is with unnecessary suffering. But again, KFC, please leave the Bible out of your comments here. You are well aware of how I feel about that. Just because you aren't directly quoting from the bible doesn't mean you aren't preaching christianity and I directly requested you not do that...again.

Baker, good point.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!