by, Renee Wood

            When people make you think and reflect on what you believe, even at the age of 64 that’s a good thing.  I don’t have all the answers and know I never will, at least not here.  But at 64 I have learned something about life and once someone accepts we’re here for a greater purpose then our own happiness and well-being, they/we’ll find a certain internal peace that may not match the chaos in their/our life.  In other words, life’s goal is not happiness with rainbow unicorns puffing out cotton candy farts!  Mostly, we have to accept, “Life is not fair”!  I think one of my first sentences was; “It ain’t fair”!  As a teenager I added; “That’s not fair – I quit”!  I don’t quite understand what “I quit” was about, I just know that if someone was caught red handed cheating in a board game, I didn’t get in trouble for quitting.  However, I did get in trouble for messing up the board so no one could play the rest of the game.

            From a very young age my mom pounded in my head that life isn’t fair, but that is just the way it is, and you have to accept it.  However, even as a young person, I felt the difference between being slapped for mouthing off, and being slapped for drooling.  One I could accept, the other stung much more than just my face.  With age comes wisdom (hopefully), over the years (probably too many years), I’ve learned the difference between “unjust” and “unfair”.  “Unfair” is when a hurricane levels your home.  “Unjust” is getting stopped while driving for no apparent reason than you’re a young black man, or being seated in the back of a fancy restaurant for no other apparent reason than you have CP and your body movements might put-off some costumers.

I’ve learned injustice is a systemic societal intentional act of will, or at least it was an intentional act before it took on systemic roots and became “just the way it’s always been” almost as an excuse not to do the hard work of changing a societal injustice now that most see it for what it is.  Whereas unfairness is just the randomness of the misfortunes life brings. Some things just happen.  I chose the words societal and systemic because these are attitudes that are embedded in a culture which hurts a certain group of people whose characteristics are perceived in a negative light with no real justification.  This does not mean that every intentional act committed against someone is unjust (it might be unfair as far as life goes), even if it deeply feels unjust.  For example, breaking up with a significant other may be intentional, and even unjust in that it was uncalled for. It’s personal and hurts the one left, but this would still fit under the random unfairness of life.

What started this thought process?  A mid-thirties person struggling with some real unfair pains of life brought on by little fault of their own, grousing about “how it doesn’t pay to be good, and they are going to be a ‘bad word’ too”.  Mind you, I knew this was coming from gut level pain that can’t be comforted except with time.  All one can do is listen and acknowledge that one sees their pain is real, which of course I did.  Also, I know this person well enough to say, as much as they may desire it in the moment, to become what they despise, they lack the capacity to be anything other than; fair, good, decent and generous, although not perfect.  I did not tell them that in the moment though, knowing sometimes you just have to let people vent. 

Being curious as to what drives people to cope with the tragedies of life, I asked what this person thought the purpose of life was?  In other words, why are we here on earth, especially if we believe there’s a heaven (I left the later out of the question)?  The dear soul answered, to be happy and comfortable, and other things that sounded like; “Happiness with rainbow unicorns puffing out cotton candy farts”!  My head spun so fast I think I got whiplash!  I thought if this is what secular society is telling young people what the purpose of life is, no wonder we have a mental health crisis – life will never meet those expectations even if you’re as perfect as St. Mother Theresa was.  People will be constantly disappointed when life continues to spout out spitballs at them for no apparent reason.  Everyone will have those mountaintop experiences on earth where everything feels right, but these don’t last forever.

When someone is hurting it’s really hard to face them with the reality that life, in general, sucks most of the time, and if you don’t know that then you’re going to be unhappy a lot!  Since my belief is in God and an afterlife, I believe we’re put here for a personal individual purpose, as well as a collective purpose.  To me it’s like boot camp – we have a lot to learn in order to appreciate heaven – the afterlife.  If we never shed a tear of loss – would the bounties of heaven mean much?  No officer wants to see harm come to those men and women under his/her charge, so they train them, and they may seem mean, unnecessarily rough and uncaring, but they want them to be prepared.  Although heaven will be perfect all the souls will be individual – not identical – and there will be a lot of them.  It’s funny that humans naturally need a community, which means we have to learn to get along with one another.  If we think of this place as a journey of hard-knocks learning, then it will be more tolerable to live in a place where things will go ary at one point or another – just the nature of living on earth.

People often question the “cruelty of God” while they enjoy their free will.  It puzzles me when people question “Why does God make/allow bad things to happen”?  Let’s get one thing straight, God doesn’t make people do bad things to hurt others.  It’s fair to question why God allows it, and we’ve all questioned that when experiencing or witnessing tragedies such as child rape or horrific abuse.  I remember my mom saying once, “Gods crying even harder then you are over this”.  It stopped me in my tracks because I never thought of God hurting, but he doesn’t only hurt for the victims, but also the perpetrators of the hurtful action because He loves both equally.  We, in our humaness, lack that capacity to love both because we are not God.  Many think we’re better then God because, of course, if there were such an Entity, He would obviously see it the way we do.  However our minds are dim to the truth of what God knows.

Free will is a tremendous gift from God.  Anyone who suffered; slavery, placed needlessly under a guardian, jailed, placed against their will in a nursing home or intermediate care facility (ICF), knows well what it’s like to have free will limited.  Humans like making our own decisions and doing what we want.  Some of us realize we are not the best decision makers so may seek informal advise from family and friends while still maintaining our free will.  Every single person who has survived beyond the age of reason (7 or 8 years old) has made mistakes, some huge, some small but our actions still have hurt someone, at some point.  How easily we forgive ourselves while holding others in disdain.  Pain is pain.  One can’t judge how much a certain action should hurt someone, so penalties can’t be placed by society’s judgment of perceived inflicted pain, especially since we all have inflicted serious pain on others, whether an intentional accountable offense, or inadvertent action.  Am I implying people shouldn’t be accountable under the law for certain actions that irreparably impair people’s lives?  Certainly not!  What I am saying is we seek revenge rather than justice.  We want an “eye for eye” rather than “turning the other cheek”.  We rather see pain than healing.  Pain comes from being disconnected from one another, and that disconnect fosters anger and pain.  That anger and pain in us wants revenge, so others can experience the pain we feel, which drives our free will to do things we wouldn’t do if we felt loved and connected.   

Connection comes from living in a community.  Today we confuse “community” with existing freely in society.  Just because you’re freely living, working and recreating in society, doesn’t mean you’re in a community.  In America today there’s very few of us who genuinely live in community – some churches maybe, some families who live on a street block together, some groups of 5 or more friends who have made it a point to stay around each other often; dinners, trips, weekly golf games, etc., but they are deeply connected and stay together for life.  People who are genuinely connected rarely commit egregious crimes like mass murders.  When someone in that community does do something terrible people’s hearts ache because they know and love that person.  They don’t want revenge, they want to know why and what they can to help them.

Americans are failing God’s boot camp!  We are hostile and think we come first always which drives a greater wedge between us, and gives us nothing or no one to lean on when tragedies happen in life.  If you want happiness put your needs and feelings second, and connect, help, care and love others – start building a community and find your purpose.