One of the most difficult lessons in life we all have to learn to accept is this...
 
 ...life isn't fair.
 
 An amoral person gets ahead while another person with ethics and a good conscience sometimes falls behind or loses out. One person can spend every night in the bars drinking with no obvious ill-effects while superbly conditioned athletes like Walter Payton die young of liver disease. A drunk driver causes an accident and lives while the innocent victim he hit dies. On and on the hue and cry goes.
 
 But is life really unfair, or are there hidden factors that we are unaware of that might influence what happens to us?
 
 We know there are things that we can't see that are nonetheless real. For example, we can't see electromagnetic waves, but you use them every day. Electromagnetic waves heat the food in your microwave oven and carry music and talk to your radio. We can't see gravity, but it keeps us from floating off into space. We can't see oxygen, but just try to live without it!
 
 You might say these things, though invisible, can be scientifically determined to be present. Okay, but you still can't see them and yet they are real. Want more proof of the existence of invisible things? Do you believe in love? Love is a force that is invisible, influences lives to a great degree, but cannot be proven to exist scientifically. Are your memories real? How about your emotions? Your self-awareness? What about odors? Need I continue?
 
 When Albert Einstein died he left an unfinished manuscript behind. It was to be his Theory of Everything, an attempt to prove the nature of reality through science. He spent the last 30 years of his life working at this theory, and hundreds of others have spent decades since trying to finish what Einstein started. Obviously, to spend so much of one's life to prove that everything is connected to everything else requires an intense belief that it is true, especially when the connections include things as esoteric as curved space, invisible membranes, ten dimensional planes or more, and perhaps even parallel universes.
 
 The Theory of Everything, referred to now as the Superstring Theory, or the M-Theory in its most recent evolution, if its ever completed, will show how everything in the universe from subatomic particles to galaxies so distant we can't even detect them, are all tied together as a single living organism. The theory is even supposed to be able to predict what the universe was like at the point of singularity, which means before the Big Bang. The Theory of Everything is, in reality, the Theory of Creation.
 
 While the most advanced minds on the planet try to prove the nature of reality and how everything ties together, millions of others take it on faith that there is nothing in heaven or earth that is not somehow connected together. My own logic and reason tells me it is so as well.
 
 So what does all this have to do with life being unfair? If you can believe that everything is connected somehow, and you can believe that there are unseen influences in our daily reality, then you can also understand that life may only seem unfair because we don't know all the influences that led to the outcomes that seem unfair.
 
 In the past people have tried to explain life's unfairness away by blaming it on God's will. Others have said it's karma from past lives, or simply the fickle finger of bad luck, or many other reasons.
 
 Perhaps it's only my sense of justice that makes me think this, but it's hard for me to believe that we are no more than random motion in a cosmic game of chance. It makes more sense that our beliefs, our thoughts, our motivations, our actions, the negative and positive balance of the energy we release, and other unknown factors are the unseen influences that lead to the outcomes that seem unfair.
 
 I could more easily believe that we have lived many times, and what seems unfair is either debt from past lives coming due or that we agreed to be born into certain circumstances before we were born, than I can believe it's all random chance and tough luck.
 
 Whatever our belief though, it still remains that we must accept that life has its difficulties and may not seem fair at times. While most of us are smart enough to try to live a good and meaningful life that will create more positive unseen influences for us than negative, what remains is what we do about it when life does seem unfair.
 
 A perceived unfairness can result in feeling sorrow, grief, anger, hatred, withdrawal, apathy, fear, shame, indignation, contempt, and other feelings that are perceived as negative. While these feelings are generally undesirable, they are honest emotions and as such, are perfectly fine. However, how we respond to these emotions makes all the difference in the world.
 
 If you're sick and receive a shot from the doctor and have a reaction, something about the treatment didn't set well with your body and it reacts with a negative condition. However, if your body responds to the treatment, the treatment is helping your body to heal. That's the difference between reacting and responding. When something happens that seems unfair you can react like you've had a dose of bad medicine, or respond to the emotions you feel in a way that helps heal.
 
 Reacting to an unfairness is to take negative actions you wouldn't normally take. It's acting on impulse and doing things you may regret. It's allowing the emotion to control your actions so you become the embodiment of the emotion.
 
 Responding to an unfairness is to acknowledge the negative emotions and feel the pain you need to feel to progress beyond them, but not to act out from within them. In other words, the negative emotions don't become the impetus of our actions. We can use negative emotions as a motivation to act, but not as a foundation for our actions. Responding is to take healthy, intelligent actions when unfairness pays us a visit, rather than taking harmful actions or withdrawing in fear or denial.
 
 Responding is facing life head-on like a mature and responsible adult rather than reacting like a spoiled child full of selfish anger. It's using your energy to pick up the broken pieces and rebuild rather than kicking the damaged pieces around in a blind fit of self-pity. It's about finding solutions rather than cursing the problems.
 
 In short, how we should respond to unfairness is to become proactive rather than reactive. That task becomes easier when we can set aside the question of whether something is actually fair or not. After all, lamenting the unfairness doesn't change the circumstance, it only saps our energy and delays our taking positive action that will result in a more beneficial end result

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Article © 2004 by Dennis Gaskill - All Rights Reserved Worldwide
 Reprinted with permission. Originally published in Almost a Newsletter.
 
 Dennis Gaskill is the creator and owner of BoogieJack.com - a popular webmasters resource site. A published book author on web design, he also publishes the award-winning Almost a Newsletter and has written several eBooks. Visit BoogieJack.com for free web graphics and web design tutorials, as well as webmaster software, educational eBooks from a recognized authority, and many other products and services.