Unfairness

The daughter ran in and collapsed against her father's lap, sobbing:

• Why is life so unfair to me, hu hu...
  Her father smiled and stroked her hair, helped her sit up properly, then asked:
• Calm down and tell me everything.
  Crying as she spoke, the girl said:
• The house I put my heart into building so beautifully is now in an area slated for clearance.
• That sounds upsetting.
• The husband I loved so dearly now wants a divorce and a division of the property.
• How outrageous.
• The son I love more than myself says he'll go with his father if we divorce.
• That's really vexing.
• The company I founded: now they want to push me out on the grounds that I run it badly.
• That's no fun at all.
• The organisers of the province's elegant-women contest want to review the outstanding-woman title I won two years ago, on the grounds that I quarrel and am on bad terms with the neighbours, hu hu.
  Her father said calmly:
• Actually, I've been waiting for this day for a long time.
• What? - the girl glared at her father - You want to be unfair to me too?
  Her father said gently:
• Only once you were desperate, with nowhere left to turn, could I tell you. Now I can say a little. You never see how unfairly you have treated the people around you. Your mother almost divorced me because I kept taking your side while you kept speaking rudely to her. Your husband, you bark at like your own servant. Your son, you force to live as you wish. Your company is always looking for ways to dodge tax, even though you demand that this country be as rich and beautiful as Japan. You've never given the neighbours any kind of gift, yet you keep demanding they respect you. If anyone offends you slightly, you hit the roof, yet you constantly harangue everybody else. You have never lived fairly; you always grab the larger share for yourself. And the principle of this world is that we should live at a slight disadvantage, giving way so that everyone can be happy. You make everyone lose out so that you can feel satisfied.
  In truth life hasn't yet been unfair to you; life has only begun to demand its own fairness.
  The girl wailed:
• Oh heavens, even you are rejecting me, hu hu... 🤸‍♀️

We often demand that life be good to us and forget that we must first be good to life. We blame the neighbours for being heartless, the authorities for being useless, our parents for being ignorant, our friends for being treacherous, our teachers for being lazy, doctors for being stupid... but really it is we who are most to blame. We are extremely selfish, caring only about our own benefit and only about satisfying our own wounded pride.

We have never loved our neighbours; we have never understood the terrible pressure on those who lead; we have never sympathised with our parents' hardship; we have never truly helped our friends; we have never loved and respected our teachers; we have never understood the toil of a doctor... We find it easy to criticise anyone, yet we ourselves have contributed nothing meaningful to this life.

When misfortune strikes us, there are all sorts of people for us to curse. But if we step out of ourselves and look back at ourselves as if at an outsider, we will be astonished that there could be someone so excessively unfair. We dodge tax yet demand that the roads be wide and beautiful. We stare at everyone we meet yet demand that they smile at us warmly. When we are robbed we call out for the police, yet normally we join in with the bad crowd to attack the authorities. At any hour we walk into a hospital there must be a doctor eagerly and attentively treating us, but if a doctor, exhausted, dozes off, we photograph it and post it on Facebook to shame them at once... We have never been fair to anyone. And if something unwelcome happens to us, it is only life beginning to demand its own fairness back.