Second verse, same as the first. Times infinity.
She gets it from me. I need to own that. Because I need the world to be fair. It's up there in importance with oxygen and water. I need karma to stay on top of its game. I need the universe to do its thing and right the wrongs and ensure those who do good, receive good. I need the jerks to constantly get pulled over for speeding and get tickets every time. That's how it should work. Except it rarely does.
I've lived enough years to see the opposite happen, and often. The unethical ones prosper. The secretly evil ones get ahead. The worst have the best heaped upon them. I can't quite square that in my mind. In fact, I obsess over the unfairness of it all. It's the stuff that keeps me up at night.
And it's equally infuriating both ways. The kindest people seemed to be served the cruelest hand. The most humble catch all the worst breaks. The best have the worst heaped upon them.
How do you reconcile a world that operates that way? How does one live with a broken record of injustice?
I am flawed. Times infinity. I'm right in the middle of that best/worst pack. I am not unethical, but I sneak candy into movie theaters. I'm not the kindest, but I do love to occasionally serve others. I demand patience and perfection and honesty from everyone I meet, but often fail to deliver those myself. And oddly, I think the world has been quite fair to me. Maybe too much so. Just not to those I love. Which is probably the universe's way of punishing me for all those times I peed in the pool growing up even though the sign clearly stated "There's no 'P' in our OOL, let's keep it that way."
Silliness aside, it's excruciating to watch those you love most suffer when it's not deserved. I want to rattle the universe and demand answers. I've screamed for fairness, shouted until I was hoarse, wrongly believing that if they could just hear me, they would see the goodness and understand. But there seems to be little connection between what is deserved and what is dished.
Perhaps the problem lies in my core belief that life should be what you make of it. That if you work hard, if you are honest and live with integrity, life should be good for you. The end. Should I lower my standards? Is that a pipe dream? Is that not in fact how the world operates and I've been too busy obsessing over the fairness of all of it to notice? Do good guys truly finish last?
If so, I want no part of that. I want to live the life inside my head, the one with a utopian flare perhaps. Now don't misunderstand. I'm not talking politics or Universal Health Care or Socialism. I'm talking you get what you give. I'm talking one of the sweetest women I know battling an unrelenting, incurable disease. I'm talking the devastating house fire of the already struggling, hardworking single mother. I'm talking the infertility of the most patient friend, who would run circles around me as a mother if she were only given the chance. I'm talking the family that lost their daddy to cancer in my hometown the same month as the family halfway across the country lost their cuddly toddler to the same disease.
I don't wish those things on anyone, even the cruelest of the cruel. But certainly the kindest of the kind should get some sort of free pass, right? They shouldn't be the ones wading through the heaviest stuff while the meanies get off scot-free. I don't like living in a world where that's so.
The most telling thing is, when I watch the ones the world dumps on, the ones that can't catch a break even if it's throw by Nolan Ryan himself, they aren't lying in bed plotting revenge. They aren't wallowing in the fact they are never the windshield, always the bug. They are just playing the hand they've been dealt—rarely complaining or asking "why me?" And they are some of the happiest people I know.
I've studied them. I've tried to emulate them. But I'm not built that way. I'm the type that believes that "and justice for all" bit. So if you need me, I'll be over here planning retaliation against the guy whose piece was a millimeter larger than mine, and then yelling at Claire for doing the same.
