it's not fair.

 

I am finally arriving at the revelation that other people do when they face huge obstacles. Many people don’t even realize what it is and I have been looking deep inside of myself trying to figure out how a person can be the happiest they have ever been, while simultaneously trudging through one of the hardest things they have ever been through.

 

 

My ah-ha! moment came to me after  scrolling through a newsfeed of ridiculously petty complaints and comparisons. Some people are just complainers by nature, and I know a few of those. The “one-uppers” and the “my life is harder therefore I’m stronger” competitors.  The people that think they have to work harder to achieve what the rest of the world apparently just gets handed to them.

It is funny to me that in every family dynamic and in the world at large, most people think they work harder than everybody else. It’s the classic husband and wife, both doing separate chores, both thinking “I do everything around here.”

When really, they both work hard.

We all work hard.

The trick is that when you stop worrying about what everybody else is doing, when you stop comparing and focusing on your differences, the work doesn’t seem as hard.

It’s too easy to face a problem and think “nobody else I know has to deal with this. It’s not fair.”

I assure you that everybody else has once battled a demon that you will never face.

We need to stop worrying about fair.

This is how I can find a best friend in my ex-husband, even when I am raising our kids alone.

This is how I can feel PURE joy instead of jealousy when my friends welcome their perfect healthy babies to the world.

This is how I can laugh at the people who dare try to tell me that I don’t work as hard as them, just because I don’t have a “real” job

and how I can relax and enjoy this time with my babies, knowing that if I don’t get called back after submitting yet another resume, that I will just submit more and more until I find what I am looking for, but that until then…I am right where I belong.

This is how that green eyed monster stays locked up. I will not be sitting down to a pity party with that creature any time soon. Instead, I am slowly starving it and saving my scraps for a garden of hope, security, joy, pride, and confidence.

Fair? Fair can suck it. Fair isn’t even real. It never has been.  Fair is just a word, setting us up for unrealistic expectations. I am letting go of expectations. Not in a bitter way, but as a serene and peaceful realization that if I had nothing to compare it to, this would all feel easy and I would enjoy it more.

I am enjoying it more.

 

 

It’s ok to wish. It’s ok to vent and to feel. To get angry when things suck…and I do

but when I stop and force myself to contemplate why I feel that way, I feel that way less.

When Max spits alllll of his medicine out in protest, am I sad because I have to repeat the dose or because most babies don’t have to get medicine shoved down their throats three times a day? I refuse to let it be the latter, and when left with the original dilemma…that hardly seems like something worth worrying about.

 

There is no room for jealousy in this life. There is no room for comparisons, resentment, or worrying about fair.

Put the bitterness in your pocket and save it for something worth spending it on.

Let it go. Be happy. Stop worrying about what your neighbors are doing. Stop worrying about fair.