If you’ve ever been a child or a parent, you’re well acquainted with the aggrieved outcry, “But that’s not fair!” I was already a seasoned mother the first time I heard another mother smugly reply to her kid, “Well, life isn’t fair!” It was upsetting. Why does anyone think that’s a good lesson to teach??
I mean, duh, life isn’t fair, as we found out for the billionth time on Saturday. It’s so fucking unfair that they won’t find that cunt guilty as charged. It’s unfair that he gets to get away with so much corruption and inhumanity when everyone else has to suffer.
So much unfairness, but why shouldn’t we let children strive to practice and expect fairness? Just because we can’t have it doesn’t mean it’s not an honorable value. Fairness is a universal concept and ideal. It’s hardwired into us. “Studies have shown” that even chimps understand fairness. There’s some experiment with bananas that illustrates this but I’m too stoned to remember the details.
Children just have an innate understanding of fairness, and it isn’t our job to turn them into cynics.
I may just be pathologically immature in still being shocked when things aren’t fair. I can’t seem to accept the unfairness of it all. I still whine, “So unfair!” at least once a day. I always say it when our Netflix won’t load, because it’s NOT FAIR.
If you expect everything to be unfair, though, you’ll start to think it doesn’t matter. You’ll be like a Republican senator! And no one wants that.
Here’s an example: My mother-in-law is 104 and not happy. She can’t see or walk or do anything but on she goes. It’s so not fair!
Likewise, I am unable to be with either of my sons, and surely that’s unfair. The universe is indifferent to fairness. But people have certain primal instincts that operate without logic.
I want things to be fair against all odds, and I want you to want that too. If you have kids and haven’t yet assured them that life isn’t fair, I hope you won’t.
Going back to my mother-in-law (because I’m that stoned) I can’t understand why people react to her age with, How wonderful! or Bless her heart! There is nothing wonderful about such advanced old age, despite that French Nun who insists on living to 117. It’s led to my husband and I affirming a wish to die before everything craps out. My husband once said he’d be ready at around 75, but of course he’s extended it a few years.
Have you Boomers come to a decision about old age? Have you settled upon a reasonable expiration date? I just read a quote by Nabokov, about a disliked writer who had lived to an advanced and “entirely unnecessary” old age, and I laughed out loud. 117 and even 104 fit into that category. Bless everyone’s heart.
For me, ten more years might be enough. I’d like to die with my hair and teeth, let alone a functioning bladder. I think that would be more than fair.
You?
(c) Diane Arbus
The one thing that my Mom used to say that absitively drove me nuts! Aaarrrrrggghhh!
44 now. If I fare like my mother, which by all accounts is likely, my planned expiration date is around 62 and no later than 65. It’s an everything is broken sort of situation and fuck that, no thanks. The western notion that life must be clutched to at any cost is absurd to me.
I think as long as I can connect to and enjoy the internet, I wanna go on.
I think until my knees give out, so 80s maybe 90.
What is fair to me may not be to you (nothing personal). Agree, “life’s not fair” is not a good lesson for children. We learn soon enough to be cynical but ” life’s not fair ” can also keep us striving to make it more so.
I don’t think people actually deeply think about old age and what that looks like because it’s so hidden from view. I visit my father in the nursing home where he lies in bed all day in his room. He can’t move much and can’t speak much. He’s confused and sad. He literally has no recollection of who he is. I’m clocking out at 80 tops, fuck that.
if i live to be that old i’ll die….lol….but srsly….i agree with you on that one. 76is good for me.