Evolution Series: The Fairness Fallacy
Life does not seem fair at all. It doesn’t seem fair that my wife has to recover from my disease. Or that temporary decisions (even made in ignorance) produce life-long consequences.
It doesn’t seem fair that addiction is acquired through joy and discarded through misery.
It doesn’t seem fair that my wife has an incurable progressive brain disease, or that my little brother was born with Down Syndrome.
It doesn’t seem fair to be hurled from the silent still of nothingness into a reality of mystery and riddle and become the consequence of my struggle to resolve them. Was I consulted before beginning this journey? Did I agree to inhabit dichotomy and paradox without explanation of purpose? To start without a memory of who I am or knowledge of what comes after?
How should I understand fairness in a world replete with contradictions? Where the search for happiness is the cause of unhappiness, pursuing life requires surrendering it, the more I need help the harder it is to get, the more I learn the less I realize I know, the more I understand the less I am understood, what feels the best to me is the most destructive for me, hanging on to some things means letting go of others, growing in power by becoming vulnerable. It seems nothing is what it appears to be.
Forgiveness, generosity, and self-sacrifice are as unfair as their opposites at the other end of the spectrum. Is my desire for fairness a desire to rid myself of the responsibility of attaining them, or discard my guilt for failing to do so?
Fairness seems like the highest standard I could hope to achieve without love, and the lowest possible standard with it.
Do I really want fairness? Will fairness give me what I hope to find? Or is fairness a polite way to reject the challenge of growing into something beautiful.
It was never meant to be fair.
It has to be something more.
If alcohol is not working for you anymore, and you are ready to explore why sobriety is more than fair, please consider joining us in SHOUT Sobriety.