Does Fairness Count?

Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1955. Deutsch: Winston Churchill, 1940 bis 1945 sowie 1951 bis 1955 Premier des Vereinigten Königreichs und Literaturnobelpreisträger des Jahres 1953. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”

                      Winston Churchill
                                                                  The longer I live the more I realize that fairness is not a measure of reality or truth. The world is not "fair." Maybe our aim should change to justice or, better yet, righteousness. Fairness has not served well as a standard for behavior, legislation, or even equality. God does not deal in fairness.

Fairness is a subjective quality. We claim foul and call the game unfair when one player or one team breaks the rules, but life is not like the game: In life not everybody gets the same chance, and some enter life with a disavantage. Intelligence, physical ability, guile, and grace seem to be distrubuted without regard to fairness. Indeed, these factors give some of us a great a step up in the world.
Some of us are handsome, and some are quick-witted. Either attribute can fit a person for success in one arena, but it is not fair when all the players don't have the same opportunity.

Like I said, life is not fair. Our demand that we make life fair is foolish. We don't have the resources to create a fair society or environment. I don't know that God even recognizes our concept of fairness. Some of us are brilliant, but don't have honor while some love with intensity, but lack integrity. The factors don't balance the scales. either. 

Is there an answer? No! God grants grace, and we are charged with making the best of the situation. Our drive in education is an attempt to maximize our talents to benefit our outcome. We need resources to fill our needs, and the skills we perfect help us fill them, but is it fair? Sick people need more accommodation from the  society at large to survive. Somebody has to help them meet their needs. People who plunder society disrupt distribution of food and necessities--we call them criminals. They are unfair players in life, and seek an unfair advantage, and the rest of us suffer for their actions.

I don't have an answer. Fairness is not achievable. I return to God's standard and look at righteousness as the measure of behavior. Justice is not much better than fairness when human wisdom becomes the vehicle for delivering it, so my best plan is measure myself by God's standard of righteousness and live in peace not judging others but submitting myself daily to God.

  

Interests of the Older Set

Getting older doesn't mean I've lost interest in things I did when I was young. I see lots of ads directed at older people that convince me I'm not lining up with the rest of my generation, or, maybe, the advertising world doesn't know us as well as they thought.

I do enjoy things that belong to a younger stage of life. I love to fly kites. Sometimes I even like to make them. I like to try new designs and teach others to enjoy them, too. My life-long fear of mathematics even yielded to getting older. I found and used the formula that lets me figure out how strong a wind a specific kite requires.

The one thing I cook with some expertise is bread. My love of bread comes from my childhood. I loved the aroma of bread baking. I started baking bread when I was first married. Sometime along the way, I started looking for different recipes and interesting shapes.  Now I like to look for shapes and ingredients that have special cultural or regional meaning. Kolache from Poland and other Eastern European countries and Pan de Muerto from Mexico, and Challah from Israel. 

My behavior in regard to getting older reveals neither an abandonment of interests from a younger age nor weariness with the subject matter. I do still like to interact with kites and bread, but  always with deeper and more interesting parameters. I do sometimes take up a new subject: A couple of years ago, I made a necklace , but I decided that bead work was not my best thing. I'm not much on playing Bridge or Forty Two. And contrary to the opinion of advertisers on TV, I don't look at match-making by on-line businesses as the answer to loneliness in my old age. It seems much more likely that the businesses are interested in making money, not making love. 

If you are getting older, find the interests that move and thrill you. Explore them in detail and find the excitement you crave. Your old age can be as challenging or rewarding as you choose.