What's fair is fair

I've been thinking a lot about this statement recently. When we're children our parents and teachers teach us to share with our siblings/classmates because it's fair. My parents always split everything right down the middle because then it was fair. If my brother got a snack, I wanted one too, it's only fair right? In bible study two weeks ago we talked about grace, and how grace isn't fair. In a video we watched a man told us to spread the unfairness around. He decided that grace wasn't fair because none of us deserve it and yet, we recieve. It continues to astound me at how the lessons our parents taught us as children change with age. I'm now much too old to assume that I get something because my brother does, but it doesn't stop that tiny feeling of neglect that is embedded in my subconsious from the time I was a small child. Now, understandably we can't all look at the world with child-like innocence for our entire lives, I mean, we'd be completely screwed. And heaven forbid we look for the good in people or give them second chances, then we're just naive. But back to the idea of fairness. I've been told for a good portion of recent history that life isn't fair. Miracles don't happen more often then they do. Young people die just as often as the old. And crappy things happen to good people too, not just people who deserve it. Maybe our adult lives would be easier to deal with if our parents had taught us that we will get screwed over by people who told us they care about us, that no matter how we prepare for the worst that life will knock you flat on your back, and that bad things will happen no matter how good you are or how much faith you have. But I guess then we'd just be raising generation after generation of incredibly cynical children. It's these kinds of thoughts that keep me up at night. Why in the world would my parents want me at the age of four to believe that the world is fair when by the age of ten that idea will be completely shattered, if not sooner. Maybe our folks want us to grow up believing that we can change the world into the perfect one they lied to us about. Everyone is always telling me that it's the hard parts of life that define you as a person and that without hard times you can's really experience true happiness. I'd like to call those people on their bullsh*t. I believe that you can find happiness without having truly terrible things happen to you. Sure, it's easier to find the happy once you've had the heartbreak, but that just doesn't seem fair. And there's that word again. Its really been hanging over my head and whenever I've talked to someone it nags me in the back of my mind, 'is that fair?'. Like my mom, she's not even 50 yet, but both of her parents have been gone for at least a year. My dad is in his mid 50's but both of his parents are completely functioning, independent people. That's not fair. My grandma died of cancer after living her entire life as a nurse helping people. My grandpa smoked for between 30 and 40 years, had multiple heart attacks, and died because he broke his hip. What's fair about any of that? A man who is like my second father was laid off even though he was amazing at his job and had 30 of experience and now he can't find any new work. Not fair. My childhood lessons about being an adult didn't prepare me for this kind of blind injustice. If this was truly the world I had been prepared for we'd be a communist nation. Everyone would have just as much as their neighbor, there would be no homeless and no ridiculously rich. But would we be happy then? Would we believe that the world was fair or would we assume that there was still some injustice? 'Well his house is blue and my house is yellow and so that's completely unfair.' Maybe we were unconsiously conditioned by our parents to constantly want more than we have been given. Or perhaps they did this to us on purpose because they never wanted us to settle for anything. Or maybe in a sick and twisted way, they taught us in this way to get some revenge because their parents did the same thing. A mix of all three? I think the most twisted part of the whole thing is that I realize that the world isn't fair, but that I expected it to be beause of what my parents taught me, and I'll probably end up teaching my kids the same thing. I'd like to think that we're taught this lesson in the vain hope on the part of our parents that our generation would've been able to change the inheriant unfairness in this world. But can anyone really make anything fair?