Ask HN: How to accept that life is unfair?
How do I become ok with life being unfair? What bothers me the most is my mortality; if it takes me x years longer to find love/dream job/etc. than other people, then that is x years I will never get back.
I don't mean to minimize what you may be feeling, but we are too hung up on fairness sometimes I think.
It's not whether it's fair, just whether you can be happy.
For example, can you be happy with a good enough job, or do you need the dream job?
"The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead."
People who thought slavery wasn't fair found a way to end it, people who weren't okay with dying of smallpox found a way to cure it, and made life a little fairer. And there were a bunch of people who weren't okay with things but couldn't do anything about it, so they didn't.
Some things are unfair for no reason and there's nothing we can do about them, and it's not okay.
You don't have to warp your mind with convoluted philosophy to become okay with things and "accept" life as it is. Life can be awesome and beautiful, life can be shitty and painful. These things don't cancel each other out. You can enjoy awesome things, you can hate and be angry at bad things. You and me and everyone we love will die some day - there's nothing that can make it okay. And yet sunsets are still beautiful and ice cream still tastes good.
You don't have be okay with bad things, you can hate/resent/fear them and still enjoy the good things at the same time. These two are not mutually exclusive. Fix what you can fix, endure and persevere through things that you can't(because you have no choice), find as much joy as you can in the good things.
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Also read "Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday - extremely well writen summary of stoic philosophy, I'm sure you will find it very useful and interesting.
Ummm fact is slavery has not ended yet. Not sure what you mean?
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
Desiderata by Max Ehrmann.
Money doesn't make you happier, it makes certain things easier, but complicates things too. Dream jobs come and go, and you will personally change, so what is a dream today can be a nightmare in a few years. The same things can be said of love, some things are awesome, others mean compromise and complications. If you aren't happy yourself, you won't make a good partner to anyone either. Being unhappy or consistently negative is also why, many times, people find others unattractive or unapproachable.
In the game of life, happiness and enjoyment are the core goals.
Like any other game, the difficulty setting on which I play it should not make a difference. Games can be enjoyable on easy, medium or hard difficulty. Just that the effort-reward curve can be distributed a bit differently.
Both Money and Career Success are tangential to your life's fundamental goals. You have to figure out what those are, and work towards them directly , rather than use weak heuristics like money and standing.
Just like a game (say an RPG), the happiness comes from leveling up and beating a competitive boss, rather than reaching endgame where you are rich and king of the continent. Similarly, for me, it is working towards the next achievable goal and making constant progress that give the most happiness. When your happiness is tied only to your relative position yesterday, then your absolute position (which is most influenced by unfairness) is unimportant.
Despite huge imporvements in QOL over the last few centuries, afaik human happiness had stayed constant.
If you decide to blame unfairness for your dissatisfaction with life, then no amount of absolute gains will ever let you feel you have reached the point where you make peace with it..
Like worldly phenomena, we are resigned to the tides, the day night cycle and our mortality. Humans make peace with their existence knowing that we can't control their routines.
Along the same line, unfairness in life is just as colossal a phenomenon. You may not be able to work against it or stop it, so its just better to make peace with it and work around it to achieve the aforementioned fundamental goals.
I have seen some personal examples of the Diogenes and Alexander story, where (at least from appearances), the person with a balanced life and not many accolades appeared to crack a smile, a lot more often than the every ambitious over-achiever stuck in the rat race. (though, typical anecdotal caveats apply)
Some people don't let where they sit on the "unfairness" scale, affect their happiness. Along those lines, I am a big fan of the $70k study [1]
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[1] Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, 107(38), 16489-16493. doi:10.1073/pnas.1011492107
We humans, generally look at people above us in terms of wealth / relationship / fame and think we are not fortunate enough. But there is significant number of folks who can only dream of basic needs. For them we are the fortunate ones.
Also the rich / celebrities / people who we envy, may not have perfect life. They have their own problems. Maybe if we know them completely we may not envy them as much. And they have their own yardstick for what is unfair.
What has worked for me, especially when I feel down, is counting the blessings and being grateful for things I don't have to worry about. Life could be so much more worse. From what I have seen, happiness does not seem to correlate proportionally with wealth / relationship / fame.
IMO, looking at people below us might help to give a balanced perspective. Hope we all find that elusive happiness within.
Not true. Your statement is an example of sour grapes:
"In an old fable by Aesop, a hungry fox noticed a bunch of juicy grapes hanging from a vine. After several failed attempts to reach the grapes, the fox gave up and insisted that he didn't want them anyway because they were probably sour.
Nowadays when somebody expresses sour grapes, it means that they put down something simply because they can't have it."
My point is, there are good number of people living below poverty line. Usually poverty has many friends like unemployment, violence, long term health issues (sometimes terminal illness), self inflicted and external abuse. While they also need to aspire to do better, they start their life with a bigger handicap and hostile environment. They need higher amount of courage, conviction and persistence to make things better.
Since the question was based on comparison, wanted to put it in context.
None of that will erase the pain that stems from being behind your peers in career or romantic pursuits. Speaking from experience, the latter cuts unimaginably deep. You don't get that time back, but the time you do have becomes immensely more valuable.
Many will say a comparison basis isn't healthy, but being highly competitive by nature I haven't yet figured out how to avoid that. All I've described is a rather effective coping mechanism; the pain will still exist, but one could say pain is a fundamental part of living life in any real sense.
As an anecdote, I used to play a couple games competitively as a hobby. While I was good, I only became an expert once I embraced two things: ridiculous amounts of practice, and the unfairness of it all. Depending on the matchmaking setup, you would be expected to defeat two or even three skilled opponents. Lamenting how unfair it all is would get you nowhere, so the only way forward was to embrace it.
Introduce a new boon to someones life, and in time their mind tends to take it in stride and it becomes harder to register that the boon is still present. The same happens with pitfalls. After a period, the initial shock goes away and we subconsciously deal with the added negative aspect of our life.
One's overall outlook on life at any given point, then, requires an effort to recognize the good things around them, and attempt to tune out the negatives. How easy that is for any given individual varies. Some have naturally sunny dispositions, while others are born curmudgeons.
At least this is what I have observed.
There is research to back this up, see:
Of course some people are permanently diminished after losing a loved one, others recover.
There are some exceptions to the findings. These conditions do cause 'permanent' reductions in most people's happiness levels:
1) Loss of a child.
2) A continual decline in one's health status.
I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, "Wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?" So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.
MARCUS COLE, "A Late Delivery from Avalon" (1996)
To be honest, it sometimes does get to me that if I had made different choices or been in different situations, I might be richer/healthier/happier. Of course, I might also be poorer/sicker/unhappier, too.
Most importantly, I also know that I wouldn't be /me/ anymore.
Life is as strange, terrifying experience that is often absurdly unfair for no good reason at all. But it can also be kind of hilarious for the exact same terrible reasons.
Develop your ability to see the humor in deeply dark and unfair situations. They aren't going anywhere. You could try to convince yourself they aren't there or that they aren't so bad with some religions/philosophies, or maybe you'll convince yourself that you'll triumph in the end - but most likely you will just end up angry, resentful, and not particularly well-liked as a result. Humor though... that's something other people (and you) can work with.
I find the existential dread caused by acknowledging the unfairness a good motivator to try to improve things. There will always be randomness, but life doesn't have to be as deeply flawed as it is today
The universe really is funny. It's absurd in so many ways, and the flaws are so obvious, so persistent, and in such contrast with certain authentically sublime experiences and emotions... Until death and pain are no longer mandatory elements of human existence, it will indeed be deeply flawed.
Thomas Ligotti - THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE
Zapffe - The Last Messiah
also maybe you are not meant to work in the field you are in considering you feel this way. if you listen to your heart and there is nothing that drives you, why other doing it? Wouldn't it be better to first know where your passion is?
And the book from the same guy, if you're interested.
While we are at great talks, listen to those two guys: Steve Jobs - https://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_... Rand Pausch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
There are great insights in all of those.
What strikes me in your question is the part "than other people". Seriously, why do you care ? One should never, never, compare to anybody else - just try to be the best 'you' that you can be.
When I turned 25, I looked over my accomplishments and wondered if they were enough to merit a quarter of a century. I decided they that while they were satisfactory, I was not satisfied, and so I decided to rectify that before my next milestone: 30.
I've already accomplished more than most of my family & friends at my age, but for me that's a low bar. I want to put beat Jobs. If I shoot for the stars, at least I'll shoot past the moon.
Ps- I know what the saying is, but seriously, I never understand why people say it like that. The moon is closer than the stars!
That's unknowable, and could be almost any number, including 0. Is that what you meant?
Oh, with one exception — savings. I haven't saved enough yet, but when it comes to savings, I pretend I'll live to be 150. 100 isn't an unthinkable age in our lifetimes, and with medical advances, I don't want to take any chances.
Sorry, but this doesn't make any sense to me. You will not get back any of the time you spent doing anything. You sat on toilet for 2 mins longer than other people everyday, then you spent months more than other people on toilet over years of your life. This doesn't mean you are going to hurry up and get out of the bathroom faster than you should.
You get what you get in your life. It's nothing to do with what you deserve or what's fair.
If you stop believing in the all powerful entity that will make it fair for everyone and start believing everything happens by a random chance, you would be better off.
"You will be what you will to be;
Let failure find its false content
In that poor word, "environment,"
But spirit scorns it, and is free.
It masters time, it conquers space;
It cows that boastful trickster, Chance,
And bids the tyrant Circumstance
Uncrown, and fill a servant's place.
The human Will, that force unseen,
The offspring of a deathless Soul,
Can hew a way to any goal,
Though walls of granite intervene.
Be not impatient in delay,
But wait as one who understands;
When spirit rises and commands,
The gods are ready to obey."
I highly recommend As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. Someone on HN recommended it and it was wonderful. It's a very quick read, less than 50 pages.
Another one of my favorite quotes is, "Choose not to be harmed - and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed - and you haven't been... It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character." - Marcus Aurelius
Me: "Life can be so cruel."
Him: "Yes, that's why you have to make sure you make a difference for the better where and whenever you can."
I try very hard to follow his quote every day. Change starts with us all.
Some see a burning house and ask why must it burn, while others reach for the hose.
A lot of wisdom in a 5min song:
Note: This advice may or may not be beneficial to your personal situation, as per all comments on an internet forum. You may need to consult a professional if you are having trouble.
Situational unfairness is a different story. I'm very bitter about the way certain deals I've worked on have turned out for me. I feel that cheats, insiders, and powermongers have gotten the upper hand in every deal I've been involved in. I never seem to come out on top and it's getting ridiculous.