fair's fair

last week i was talking to someone (i honestly can't remember who) about fairness and the way life doles out breaks and benefits and outcomes. the way that karma doesn't always seem to directly hit its mark, or benefit a do-gooder and that sometimes life's justice is meted out in uneven chucks. i can think of people on both ends of the spectrum. those who deserve more breaks than they get and those who haven't really had to suffer at all.

when i think about these scenarios, the name paris hilton comes to mind. i'm not really sure why. but i think, there is a girl who has had every privilege this world can offer. she was born into a family with money and power, she is thin and blonde and is not completely unattractive and has a trust fund, and despite her obvious need to receive attention from the media and the public to achieve some sort of perverted celebrity, her life is pretty charmed. she couldn't even handle sitting in a jail cell for what 30 days by herself, because she had probably never been asked to be alone with her thoughts for that long. or suffered the indignity of being grounded by her obviously indulgent parents. sure, sure i know what you are saying, who am i to judge anyone's circumstances or life experiences or know what they go through on a daily basis? fair enough. but i am guessing that hilton never worried about where her next meal was coming from, or her next soon-to-be-neglected pet for that matter. the harsh words the media throws her way are generally fair, deserved and she is the one that put herself in that position in the first place. she never worried about a roof over her head or a retirement fund. she never even had to think about an actual career. she can walk through this world with her head in the clouds and still end up, at the end of an 80 year run, on top. one could even say that her lower iq is a benefit, because she doesn't even have to recognize how useless and disposable she really is. ouch.

and so you don't think i am just hating on paris, i too have lived a fairly charmed life. besides a bout with lyme's disease that left me perpetually sick for several of my formative years and the curse of being a chubby adolescent in a society that worships the thin, i have had a pretty good run. i can pay my rent, put food in my mouth, clothe myself and once in a while go out to a nice restaurant or the movies. i have also had the benefit of both my parents as both an emotional and monetary safety net, underutilized yes, but ever present. my childhood experiences have made me resilient and sensitive, yes, aware of the physical and emotional pain inflicted on others by circumstance or trickery. either way is wicked and fate is a fickle mistress. but knowing that my parents are there when i make a misstep and fall off the tightrope we all walk, permits me to live the highwire lifestyle i have taken to in the past. i paid for graduate school myself, took on the loans, the crushing debt that i will be paying for until i am 65 and probably far beyond that (no exaggeration), but when my plane landed in the states, they were the ones who picked me up at the airport and it was their house that i lived in until i could get back into the workforce. others aren't afforded these benefits. i know that the fates have smiled on me thus far and i am thankful, i just wish others could get the same treatment.

my mother's life is a good example of the random assignment of pleasure and pain by the universe. when she was 5 my mother lost her mother to ovarian cancer. but that wasn't where the loss ended. my grandfather, who i suspect was always a selfish man tempered by a caring, giving and traditional woman, spent no time disrupting the lives of his children. my mother's siblings, much older, were out of the house by then, but my mother too young to even understand what had happened, was shuttled to her aunt's house, so that her father could return to italy. her aunt only spoke italian and i am sure that the transition was scary and frustrating and through it my mother learned to be accommodating and pliable and, in some ways, invisible. and although both of her parents were italian, my grandmother had only allowed english to be spoken in the house so their transformation to typical american family could be complete. when my grandfather returned to the states almost a year later, he had a new wife and she was with child. my mother returned to their home, but all traces of my grandmother were removed from the house. the rest of my mother's childhood and adolescence was marred by incidences of unfairness and bitter remarks and soul crushing cruelty at the hands of loved ones.

just thinking about it makes me want to scream and cry and throw things around and i turn beet red and want to write letters and make phones calls and change history. my mother, however, remains calm and accepting in the face of her own memories. she tries to recall the brighter moments of her formative years. don't get me wrong, she recognizes the emotional inequity between say her childhood and my father's. she knows that things didn't happen like that for other kids her age. perhaps it was the skills she acquired in that year that she lost her mother, where she learned to take things as they come and not ask why of someone or something  that can't answer back. i don't think it is a coincidence that she doesn't believe in god.

i think of my mother often in times of other's hardships. i compare their reactions to hers. she has never complained, she is not just a glass half-full person, she is a glass overflowing person. i used to wake up each morning to a knock on my bedroom door and the words "rise and shine!" she is the personification of positivity to the point of annoyance. but however she chooses to approach the world she has earned it, and even in my crabbiest of moments i have to remember that.

but the universe didn't throw all shit experiences at my mother. i feel that in some ways, there was an evening out of the karma imbalance for her in the form of my father. she met him at 16. they have been together for more than 40 years. they love each other like couples at the end of hollywood romances love each other. they spend all of their time together. sometimes my mother complains that my dad needs to get his own life, he is all up in her shit (my words not hers) and that his retirement is really cramping her social life. but this is their banter. this is the way it has been since she was a lovestruck teenager or should i say she still is a lovestruck teenager. and for my father's part, he gets it. he gets her and understands the quirks of her personality that were borne out of those childhood years. he admires her for her resilience and fortitude and all of these other attributes that helped her survive in tact and with a smile.

i have friends that have lived charmed lives, some recognize it and others not so much. i also have friends that just can't seem to catch a break, life keeps lobbing them grenades and as much as they try to avoid them, some shrapnel this way comes. i don't know how it works out there in the universe, i don't know how to turn the tables or alter the course of events, i don't even know if karma and fate or anything exists, although i feel like there is some sort of energy out there. and since i don't believe in god, or allah, or whatnot what do i have but my weirdo new age mumbo jumbo? i do have control of my own actions and through my words or advice, hope that i sometimes inspire the positive actions of others. but sometimes there is nothing you can do and bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and the only thing that gets you through is that one day you'll see the roles reverse. and the people who have wronged the ones you love get there's and the people you love find people to love them as much as you do. 

this is what popped up when i googled karma