life lesson

life is unfair

some of us win in ways of luck and others in ways of strategy, but rare is the soul that wins at everything. life is unfair. sometimes that idea can be a comfort, more often an outrage.

on a personal level, being fair is often a challenging virtue. sometimes we want more than our fair share, sometimes we give more than we get...how we suffer in the name of equity!

when i was little, my mother, exhausted by sibling squabbles, made somethings fair with this simple rule: one cuts, the other chooses.

in other words, you have a piece of cake that you must share. one takes the knife to cut it in half, the other chooses from the halves. the idea is that the most fair cut comes when the other gets first dibs on your slicing skills.

i like to use this rule in many aspects of relationships. if there is a choice to be made, let one person come up with options and the other make the final decision. go with it. if there is work to share, divvy it up and let the other choose their lot. things tend to be more equally distributed when the chance to get stuck with the less desirable lot is real.

cutting and choosing...it's a fair as fair can be...