Has life been fair to you?

I can accept the 'unevenness' (is that a word?) of life.

It is tempting to sigh and say that life can be so unfair. Every now and then, you'll hear someone lament, "Why does X have to get cancer?" And I find myself thinking: who, then, does deserve this disease?

But suppose you were allowed to direct fate. As a kind of deity, you pass judgment: yes, after that devastating earthquake, ruthless Vera's house collapses, but her wonderfully kind neighbor Rosa's remains standing, insofar as the laws of engineering permit. Or: let Mike's marriage go to ruin. Not much fun for his wife Stella and their children, but Mike gets what he deserves. And we'll pass the lung cancer on to Ulla, because she's both intolerable and single, so she won't be missed. Hopefully.

I have a feeling that, as an arbiter of fate, you would constantly be confronted with difficult dilemmas. And how human would you still be by that point?

Then there is another obstacle. Everyone has their own ideas about who ought to be spared, who should be put through the wringer, and who deserves no more than the occasional pinprick. I have no idea what such a ledger would look like, but it seems to me that this approach could only produce a world even more hellish than the one we already inhabit.

Of course, we could leave the fair distribution of misery to an actual deity. Yet it strikes me that such a being would face much the same dilemmas as we humble mortals do. Better not burden a god with that job!

No, I would rather live in a world where chance is both distributor and ruler. Not pleasant, perhaps, but better.

What does seem beyond dispute to me, is that some people are struck disproportionately hard. I think the truly human response is then to offer help and comfort wherever you can, not to sigh and say that life can be so unfair.