“It’s not fair,” my 13yo will whine.
“You’re right,” I’ll usually say.
“I worked a lot already!” she’ll point out.
“Yep.”
“I should get to go!”
“You’re right,” I’ll agree again. “Now. How much does [the mountain, the clock, the rain] care about everything you said?”
I’m trying, you see, to teach my daughter that we have to deal with reality, not some cockamamie cooked-up version of “fair” where everything that you want comes to you because you deserve it.
People who call 911 because restaurants mess up their order.
People on Half-Dome who keep climbing despite the weather.
People on the freeway who keep driving when they can’t see a damn thing (1991, 2009, 2011, I could go on).
Let me get my cane to wave while I rant.
People think they are entitled to things going right for them. Restaurants can’t run out of the exact food they want! Weather can’t kill them within sight of their goal! Tractor-trailers can’t run over them on the freeway because they were invisible in the dust storm! Rescuers will save them from stupid!
Why do people act like this? Because we teach them to act like that. I see this every day at my school. We give all the kids IDs, and then one of the results of losing their ID is they have to go to the back of the line at lunch. It’s a very mildly punitive measure–because the IDs have bar codes that let the workers charge the proper account in seconds, the kids with IDs will get fed a lot faster, which means the kids at the end of the line will get fed faster. Everything runs more smoothly, and going to the back of the line to wait an extra five to ten minutes gives the kids incentive to find their ID. It’s training for when the outcome of losing say, your driver’s license, is a lot more than five minutes of waiting.
Except the parents can’t let even five minutes happen. I’ll get calls from parents begging me to let their kids eat first because it’s mom’s fault child doesn’t have his ID. She handed it to him, you see, but he set it down. Or it’s in dad’s car and he drove off with it–in the child’s backpack, so she doesn’t have her homework either and can you tell the teachers it’s not her fault?
Really? If I leave my backpack in my car going into work, that’s on me. It’s not my kid’s fault for not handing it to me.
Call me ridiculous, but I think knowing I’m in charge of taking care of me makes a difference in most things I do in life. For instance–I’m not the most responsible person in the world, but at least I know that if I’m driving in a monsoon and it’s getting bad, the universe/God/whatever doesn’t owe me safety because I have to get somewhere now. No, if I’m flat out being stupid by driving into a wash during a storm, it’s on me if I never come out again.
This is called a consequence, and it happens, not through the meanness of other humans (usually) but through–oh, the laws of physics. The rule of law. Time’s inexorable march. Something, depending on what we’re getting wrong. It’s a phenomenon called cause and effect. And whether we create the cause or not, it is our responsibility as adults to be as aware as we can, and to predict the effect so we don’t get caught in it.
It’s a survival skill, people. Millions of years of evolution (or, if you like, our God-given brain*) have led to our ability to use reason to keep us alive. To see and react to our environment intelligently. So the next time we hear “It’s not fair!” coming from you or spoken by someone else, how about a little reality check?
To quote Jareth, “You say that so often. I wonder what your basis of comparison is.”
In other words, that sounds like a whiny spoiled teen, and we need to stop and think with our grown-up brain.
I promise, every firefighter, every forest ranger, every paramedic ever, will be very VERY grateful if we can all knock off the “but I want it!” crap and start dealing with the reality that’s actually in front of us.
Yes, I realize I’m probably preaching to the choir here, as you’re smart enough to be reading my blog… *shifty eyes*
Hey, I’ll even take the lead. From this day forward, I will work to stop thinking I deserve a donut/piece of cake/piece of chocolate because I’ve been so good. Those things taken too often (everyone needs a treat sometimes!) destroy the progress I want to make by being so good, and thus my suffering is in vain and I am tired of it.
I’m going to get to Machu Picchu, dammit.
As for the title of this post, and any misplaced heroic urges it may bring–yes, certainly, there are and should be times when failure is not an option. A quest for chicken McNuggets at 2 a.m. is not one of those times. Please to reserve your truly Herculean efforts for things like, oh, bringing the astronauts of Apollo 13 safely home.
*I don’t find these to be mutually exclusive, but some do. That’s a whole other rant.
Love it! I totally agree (even with that footnote). Fair is something for laws… everyone should have an equal chance, and everyone should be judged equally. Fair has nothing to do with you making poor choices. Consequences happen. If you’re smart, you plan for those consequences knowing what you want to happen. If I know I’ll be hungry at noon and want a pasta salad I can boil the water at 11:30. My consequence will be pasta salad at noon. Whining at noon that I was lazy at 11:30 and it’s unfair will not actually get me pasta salad.
I attended a high school (Jesuit, military) in New York City. There were no excuses allowed for being late for school, ever. The punishment was not mild. Usually 1+ hour of marching in military formation after school: excrutiatingly irritating and pointless and boring. I lived in New Jersey, and under the best of conditions my my commute was 1.5 hours. More often 2+. Blizzards, closing of tunnels, shutting down of subways,any of a million things beyond your control could make you late for school. It didn’t matter.
I’m actually not entirely convinced that a slightly more nuanced policy might have been better. There is something to be learned, after all, from seeing justice tempered with mercy.
But the main point (which is also yours) was very well made. I was seldom late for school, and although I don’t have records in front of me 40 years later, I expect that my “on-time performance” improved each year.
Oh, heck. You’ve been staring over my shoulder for the last half hour, haven’t you? 😐 😉
Thanks for an excellent post, shared with excellent timing. I totally agree with everything you say here, but it’s about time I actually REMEMBERED that 😀 hehe.
Gratefully,
Inky
Omg, you are so right about failure actually being an option. Since I’m a teacher assitant (of sorts) at a high school it has opened my eyes to how teens think things should always be “fair”. For example, these kids in English Honors class thought it was “unfair” for them to get a D on their paper because they didn’t know how to analyze. They actually cried. Yes, they were upset because of their grade. But if they really wanted a great grade in an honors class, why not work hard for it? Some even plagiarized. Yep, then expected for us teachers not to know about Spark Notes and to catch them. Some even mumbled under their breath, “I’ve never been caught and I never will be.” Oh, really? Well, I hope you do get caught! Even though probably to you, it’s “unfair” that we, as teachers, expect so much out of you.
Even when I was being taught how to be a teacher, some of the professors mentioned that we should award all of the children, no matter how well or how bad they did. Excuse me? I should give all of my kids candy (which is expensive as all get out) for trying but failing at what they did because they didn’t feel like putting in the effort and figured they get awarded anyway? I don’t think so. Or giving kids a 50 instead of a 0 because “well, 0’s are so harsh.” Well, in the real world, if you don’t turn in your work you’re fired. I’m just preparing them for the real world by giving them 0’s and not 50’s instead.
It just kills me that politics have now dictated what we should do in the classroom. We should have every right to give a kid an F if they earned it, of course, and not curve his/her grade. Don’t even mention athletes. That just gives me a headache.
Anyway, great post. I’m glad someone mentioned that failure is an option. 😉
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Too funny! I am known to rant from time to time on people not taking responsibility for themselves. Most often in my job, where I’m a contract lawyer. I represent ‘the little guy’ and all too iften I see contracts where the big whopping company wants the little guy to be responsible even if things are the fault of trhe big company. I have made it my personal mission in life to make those big companies take responsibility. 🙂 Sometimes it works.
It is also very true that we don’t get what’s fair or what we deserve. My MC in my current WIP actually comments ‘We don’t get what we deserve, we just get what we get.’ Yeah, she’s the one of my characters who has a little of me in her. But the fact that consequences follow actions is a very important life lesson.