Five Stick Friday

As a child and even through my teenaged years, my Mom, who held advanced degrees in Early Childhood Education, began warning me I had an “achilles heel to being happy”.

“Mark, you want everything to be fair. To be equitable. For good to win. For evil to lose. And most of the time life is just. But if you go through life expecting it to always be fair, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. And how you handle that unfairness is going to be key”.

She was right. But as hard as she tried, she didn’t successfully remove my desire for ubiquitous “fairness”. I’ve gone through my life wearing too much of my heart on my sleeve. I just don’t know another way to do it.

So, let me back up a little bit. There were many times when I thought a situation wasn’t “fair” that it was indeed completely fair and I just didn’t like the situation at hand. When I ended up in 6th chair trumpet on my first chair tryout, I screamed at home that “It wasn’t fair!” That wasn’t true…it WAS fair. I got beat. It made me work harder and made first chair that much sweeter when I finally got there. So yes, I’ve had my share of false alarms about typecasting perfectly fair situations as “unfair”. I’d like to think I DID grow out of that.

Another example. When my son Davis was around 14 1/2 he was diagnosed with scoliosis. His initial spine curvature was 19 degrees and we hoped to all hopes we could manage with a physical brace. But as he grew his curve got disastrous, to the point it was going to require surgery. And while I tried my best to be the “strong Dad” for Davis in his presence, I was so upset and at one point told God himself that “This isn’t FAIR!” But it had nothing to do with fairness. My son had scoliosis. End of story.

But my current struggle regarding “fairness” is with the state of Politics in the United States. There are so many issues where the will of the people is so crystal clear. Background checks for guns. Access to a safe abortion. Access to reasonably priced medication. Banning battlefield weapons to protect our children. All of those issues poll well above 70 percent with Americans at large. And yet, somehow in our “fair” political system, nothing seems to be able to be done about lawmakers who intentionally ignore the will of their constituency.

It’s not fair.

“Well win some elections and change it”, the pundits say. That has happened ( the winning elections part), but somehow the process of expressing the will of the people has been highjacked through the notion of filibusters, our slow as molasses legal system, and downright under the table payoffs and shenanigans to keep minority ideas in power.

It’s not fair.

Some other top of mind examples.

Reality Winner stole one classified document with intent to expose corruption. She broke the law. And she went to jail for 5 years for it. Donald Trump stole hundreds of classified documents, claimed they are his, lied about returning them through his attorney, and years later is still DJ’ing parties at Mar-A-Lago and tweeting at the prosecutor trying to bring him to justice. If it’s me or you that stole those documents, we’re already behind bars either awaiting trial or already convicted…it’s not fair.

In the classic “smoke filled backroom deal” some politicians and charlatans decided , without any vote or input from the citizenry, that Cobb County was going to pay more in property taxes to prop up the Atlanta Braves and their construction of a new stadium. Nope. That wasn’t fair, either.

So…without listing a bunch of other situations…the issue at hand is “living with unfairness”. My Mom saw this issue in me as she raised me. I believe it to be a legitimate mental health issue. Because the world is not fair. And it’s never going to be.

My struggle now is when…when do you just “let it go”? Which injustices are worth speaking about? Which aren’t? And then I fall into the trap of trying to speak to all of the things I feel aren’t fair, and the cycle starts all over.

I’ve never been to a therapist over this…and perhaps I should. It feels strange at 59 to believe I’m going to be able to alter the way I see the world. But I suppose it’s worth a try.

In the meantime, I’m praying that some sense of normalcy is restored in our country.

Because banning books, whitewashing history, watching people die without medication over a profit margin, attacking gay and transgendered citizens and people of color, bailing out banks when rich people lose while screaming about bailouts for predatory college loans, and using state legislatures to overturn elections isn’t normal in this country.

And it’s also not fair. And it never will be.

Dedicated to my Mom…Wanda Kincer Henry (9/5/33-7/25/11)