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Life isn’t Fair, and Mickey Mouse is a Rat

February 29, 2008

Scott mentioned that he read my post titled, “Deal Timing: Cut Your Deal ASAP” and it prompted a conversation about fairness that I decided to write about here. Far too many people in this country are focused on what is ‘fair’. When I was around six years old my mom explained an important concept about fairness, “Life isn’t fair, and Mickey Mouse is a rat.” It took me a while to get it, but once I did it was liberating.

Many of us spend time being frustrated when we encounter a less than fair situation. Of course the only way we can determine what is ‘fair’ is to compare our situation to the situation of others similarly situated (I hope that makes sense). Ironically, my mom’s point about fairness was rooted in our belief in grace, a concept better explained by John Claypool,

And so God began to create not to get something for God’s self but to give something of God’s self. In other words, bottomless generosity is the source out of which all creation comes, and because of generosity, the truth is none of us, if we look deeply into our lives, can claim that we have earned this existence of ours by our own efforts. Each one of us were given life as a gift. If you look profoundly enough, birth is windfall, is coming into the possession of something that is not ours by deserving, but something that has been given to us. If we will stay in touch with that primal grace that marks the beginning of all of our lives, then the truth is we have reasons to be grateful no matter what our particular circumstances. We no longer think in terms of justice because life is not fair, because it is rooted in grace. Rather we have reason to believe that the sheer wonder of aliveness is an unending source of joy and of gratitude.

Once you come to terms with your own sense of entitlement (and we as Americans have this sense in spades) you suddenly become painfully aware that, ‘yes life isn’t fair, and thank God it isn’t‘. Since you are already comparing your lot in life to everyone else around you, spend a moment to compare your life to all of the people in the world who live here now and who have ever lived; how does it compare? Is your situation fair? If you spend some time thinking about it, you may come to realize that fairness is unimportant. I can’t help you realize this, but if you take a hard look at your life I promise you will.

I have a friend and father of two who recently went through a messy divorce. He is still struggling with the ordeal and as a result he spends a lot of his time thinking about how unfair the process was. John Claypool’s telling of the parable of the two farmers expresses what I would like to tell my friend better than I can:

There is an old rabbinic parable about a farmer that had two sons. As soon as they were old enough to walk, he took them to the fields and he taught them everything that he knew about growing crops and raising animals. When he got too old to work, the two boys took over the chores of the farm and when the father died, they had found their working together so meaningful that they decided to keep their partnership. So each brother contributed what he could and during every harvest season, they would divide equally what they had corporately produced. Across the years the elder brother never married, stayed an old bachelor. The younger brother did marry and had eight wonderful children. Some years later when they were having a wonderful harvest, the old bachelor brother thought to himself one night, “My brother has ten mouths to feed. I only have one. He really needs more of his harvest than I do, but I know he is much too fair to renegotiate. I know what I’ll do. In the dead of the night when he is already asleep, I’ll take some of what I have put in my barn and I’ll slip it over into his barn to help him feed his children.

At the very time he was thinking down that line, the younger brother was thinking to himself, “God has given me these wonderful children. My brother hasn’t been so fortunate. He really needs more of this harvest for his old age than I do, but I know him. He’s much too fair. He’ll never renegotiate. I know what I’ll do. In the dead of the night when he’s asleep, I’ll take some of what I’ve put in my barn and slip it over into his barn.” And so one night when the moon was full, as you may have already anticipated, those two brothers came face to face, each on a mission of generosity. The old rabbi said that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, a gentle rain began to fall. You know what it was? God weeping for joy because two of his children had gotten the point. Two of his children had come to realize that generosity is the deepest characteristic of the holy and because we are made in God’s image, our being generous is the secret to our joy as well. Life is not fair, thank God! It’s not fair because it’s rooted in grace.

My mother freed me from myself when I was six years old by explaining this very basic concept to me.  This isn’t to say I don’t get sucked into frustrations related to perceived injustice.  In fact earlier this week I posted a diatribe describing how unfair a recent bankruptcy sale was.  I have to constantly remind myself, “luckily for me, life isn’t supposed to be fair”.  Focus on what you can do to make your life and the lives of those around you better.  Don’t worry about fair.  The constitution doesn’t say Life, Liberty, Happiness and the pursuit of Fairness for a reason…

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog, Personal 

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