Yep – life is no walk in the park. It’s not EASY, it’s not SMOOTH; it doesn’t unfold all NEAT and TIDY like a Hollywood movie.
There are times when life slams you HARD. There are times when your heart BREAKS.
And if you’ve picked up this book, I suspect you’re going through (or have gone through) at least one of these times.
I HEAR YOU. I GET IT.
You could tell me your story and it would have the same title as every other story of depression – ‘It’s Not Fair.’
Well, here’s the thing. Nobody ever carved in stone ‘Life will be FAIR’. Despite this, at the heart of our disappointments and sorrows is the idea that life SHOULD be fair and that unfair things should not happen to us. And yet they DO.
If there is one ABSOLUTE in life, it is this: you WILL be challenged! However, how MUCH you are AFFECTED by these challenges is actually very much in your hands.
The first thing we need to dispose of is the idea of a ‘rewards’ system – i.e., if I do good things, I’ll be rewarded; or bad things only happen to me because I’m a ‘bad’ person or I’ve ‘failed’ in some way.
And life should punish those I deem to be bad or unworthy, and life is unjust if they get to walk away without consequence.
The notion that life is some sort of sideshow alley – where you win the teddy bear for the number of goodness points earned, or the booby prize when you don’t meet the quota – is one that keeps you in misery when things don’t turn out the way you would like.
Life ISN’T fair when it’s limited to your EXPECTATIONS. How can it be, when what might seem FAIR to you, seems UNFAIR to someone else? What seems WRONG to you may be perfectly REASONABLE to someone else.
The truth is, life is neither FAIR nor UNFAIR – it just IS.
We tend to impose HUMAN TRAITS on anything from animals to cars or even the weather – as though they have a will and CHOOSE not to do what we WANT them to do.
But does the river have a personal AGENDA to flood your house?
No – the river is just doing its THING and your house happened to be in its WAY. You might have even built your house on a FLOOD PLAIN!
And your life has been like that – things have come along and you were in the WAY of them. No matter what opinion you place upon such events – RIGHT or WRONG, FAIR or UNFAIR – they HAPPENED. And they happened to you simply because you were THERE.
Life is just rolling along like a big river, and you’re either going to insist on paddling AGAINST THE TIDE (because that would be FAIR!) or go WITH the way the CURRENT is flowing.
There IS a way to navigate life so that you don’t end up dashed against the rocks each time there’s a challenge (and this book will help STEER you); but just for now, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll AGREE with you: yes, sometimes life seems to truly SUCK. So be it.