Life Isn’t Fair, But It Also Doesn’t Owe You A Thing

Life totally isn’t fair.

It’s not fair that some people grew up in a home that couldn’t keep food in the fridge because their family was living paycheck to paycheck just trying to get by. It’s not fair that some children grow up without a family or that their parents are taken from them. It’s not fair that some parents have to lose their children to cancer or a shooting. It’s not fair that some people are born into money and others are born into a crack house with parents in and out of jail. It isn’t fair that a middle class family doesn’t qualify for financial aid to send their children to college with but instead have to drown themselves in student loans because the government doesn’t help people who are just above the line. It isn’t fair that the world’s richest population only makes up one percent of the world, yet it feels like they never do anything else to help. It isn’t fair that basketball players get paid more than surgeons. It isn’t fair that some have their health taken from them.

None of it is fair, but unfortunately that is life and none of us have the power to change that.

You can’t choose the family you’re born into or what social class you’re labeled as part of growing up. You can’t choose how you look or if you’re born with crippling social anxiety. You can’t choose if you’re born healthy or with physical or mental disabilities. You can’t choose any of that because the world decides for you.

The world decides how you will be brought into this world, and it’s no ones fault.

You can’t change the life you were born into but you can change how you go from there. You can go up from being poor, raised in a family with five other kids to a single mother who couldn’t provide much. You can go up from there by working your ass of day in and day out, setting goals and doing whatever it takes to get there. That might mean not going out with your friends, not wasting any money on unnecessary items to save money for college or maybe another way out. Your life will be hell over the years it takes you to save up enough to get where you want to be, but it’s possible and you can do it. I’ve seen living proof of it.

You can come back from being homeless and living on the streets. You can get help, you can decide you want to fix the decisions you’ve made and pick yourself up. And no, I don’t know what being homeless is like but I’ve heard story after story. I’ve listened to people who have hit the lowest lows and I’ve watched them come back successfully.

I’ve seen people addicted to drugs, homeless, stealing with no money to their name come back and I’ve seen who they are today. I’ve watched them almost die, but they didn’t, they fought through. They’re different now and they’re not only different but they’re also good people. Some of them were born into money, some of them were not, it’s all about the decisions and influences we have along the way guiding us.

Life can screw you over, it can place you into a situation you hate, you can shake your fists at the sky and question why you got screwed over and put into this situation, but you have the power to change it.

Life isn’t fair, I know that. It isn’t fair to the people who are born in Aleppo or other countries at war, it isn’t fair to the people who are born with a physical disability, it isn’t fair to the people who are born raising themselves, it isn’t fair to people who know what it’s like to have a normal life then have everything ripped away from them. It isn’t fair to people who spent their whole lives working on building a home to only have it destroyed in a natural disaster or taken from them in a situation they can’t control. It isn’t fair, none of it is and it fucking sucks.

I’ve seen the damage that can be done, I’ve seen my friends work 14 hour days with no days off and I’ve seen them struggle because no matter how much they work they still can’t afford anything remotely luxurious, but they can afford a roof over their heads and food, and sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes that has to be enough. But that’s also their reality right now and right now doesn’t have to mean forever. They have goals, they have a plan, they have hope and sometimes that’s all you need because as soon as the hope is gone you’re left with nothing.

It isn’t fair to anyone, but the great thing about the world is that people can always create something out of their position. You can go from being dirt poor to a life filled with success or you can go from being filthy rich to dirt poor.

It’s undeniable that sometimes life down right sucks. You can feel like you didn’t do anything wrong to deserve the shit that’s being thrown at you and sometimes you didn’t, but life doesn’t care. Life does what it wants and no one has any control over that.

Sometimes things are just flat our cruel, I won’t argue that at all, but sometimes life is what you make of it. Being in a rut now doesn’t mean you’ll be there forever. I’m not saying there won’t be challenges and difficult times ahead because there will be, no one in this world is exempt from tough times, but sometimes you just have to choose to feel hope that things won’t always be this way and work towards something better. Sometimes a little hope is all you need to keep pushing to make it out of the dark times you’ve been struggling through because things can get better.

You can’t help where you came from but you can help where you go from there.