“Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.”
-Eli Wiesel
Life is unfair. For most of my life I have struggled with this. Poor people get the short end of the stick and the rich get away with a lot.
Attractive people make better impressions and we are judged by the color of our skin. Women are constantly being discriminated against.
Racism is alive and well, and people are hurt, abused, murdered and robbed every second of the day.
Horrible things happen all around us, so:
How can we live and thrive in a world full of unfairness and evil?
It’s easy to get overwhelmed and bogged down by the weight of the world and that’s not even taking into the account the struggles we face in our own lives.
My perspective began to change in my early thirties when I suffered a meltdown.
In searching for answers, one of the books that helped me begin to see life differently was called, The Road Less Traveled, by the late psychiatrist, Scott Peck.
In it he begins with, “Life is difficult...,” but then he goes on to say, “... when we understand life is difficult, life becomes easier...”
I struggled with that concept for awhile, wondering what he meant. Then I began to understand, it’s my expectation of wanting life to be easy and not wanting to do the work on myself that made it hard.
I began to make the necessary steps to change the direction of my life. What catapulted me further was a therapist’s response to my statement of how unfair life was.
She responded with, “...then make your own fair...”
I really liked that and began to do small things in my life to right the wrongs I saw. I began to make my own fair.
How do we begin to make our own fair in a world that’s unfair?
I began to understand that when I took that which I saw as unjust in my life and turned it around, transforming my bad experience and making It into a positive one, I was making life fair for me.
In other words, “...make lemonade out of lemons.” That dark experience in your life, if brought to light, can be a ray of hope to others.
One of the most famous examples of someone making his own fair is Romanian-born, American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel.
He took his struggle and personal experience of total humiliation and depravity in Hitler’s death camp, and turned into the book Night.
He delivered a message, "...of peace, atonement, and human dignity...," for all mankind and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work.
Instead of allowing his Holocaust experience to weigh him down and destroy him, he used it as a tool to be a light to others.
We can make our own fair in an unfair world. By changing how we see the world, we change our lives and become a beacon of hope to the world.
Winner of the Bronze Award in the International Reader's Choice Awards and soon to be featured in Publisher's Weekly,
Olivia Castillo, like the jibaros of the past, captivates audiences with her timeless tale of love, loss, and rebirth in, The Song of the Boricua. You can find her book on Amazon,