I think most people know that life isn’t fair, whether in English, in another language via an analogous expression, and/or intuitively. Yet, I’ve rarely heard anyone respond to life isn’t fair with fighting words. I’ve only generally heard people begrudgingly agree with the statement and/or curse the fact.

I was once one of those people who only ever agreed with the life isn’t fair idiom, accepting it as conventional wisdom. That was until one day in my early 30s, when I was bemoaning some grave unfairness in life. At one point in a typical psychotherapy style conversation I often have with myself to debrief matters about which I’m not happy, my defiant side came out to challenge the victim me to ask So what? What are you going to do about it? Everything then changed, with me not being the type to back down from a good challenge.

Reflecting on my defiant approach later, I decided I was going to stop merely accepting that life isn’t fair. It isn’t fair, I will accept that. However, I wasn’t ever just going to leave it that way again, either. I was going to do something about it, whether enough to rectify it or not, since I knew I would not be able to rectify it fully every time. Further, I wasn’t going to wait for when life treated me unfairly to initiate a reaction to it, either. I realized there were plenty of unfair things in life I could take my pick to make fair, or should I fall short, make fairer. By the best of chances, the English language gave me a beautiful pun in the word fairer to make this quote. That fairer had a justice and beauty definition to it, both relevant to my quote, only made my fair response to life isn’t fair, fairer.

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This post is one of 70 quotes I wrote, each with an accompanying essay, in my e-book and paperback Stars I Put in my Sky to Live By, on Amazon or Smashwords (choose your price including free!).