The Injustice of Life

Morning!

It's 5am on a Saturday morning and believe me -- I am the last one to expect myself sitting in a hot dark workroom hunched over my keyboard instead of lying in a comfy bed in my air-conditioned and cool bedroom. But here we are. I guess I just had one of those moments where no matter how little you sleep, you're just wide awake. Call it the fickleness of fate or the injustice of life, it is what it is and coincidentally what's on my mind.

I am also one day late (again) with my blog. So much for the promise to write an entry a day. That I also had not planned (I just simply forgot). Now, if there were readers out there who read this blog every day (and one person actually commented on my 'Doubt' blog saying they did -- so don't give up) they might have been disappointed to find no entry yesterday. They might have felt a (small) injustice done upon them. And they are right, but such is life. And that too ties in to the theme of the day.

Life is all about injustice, because justice is in my opinion a mental construct brought forth from the very sensitive and subjective perspective of the viewer. Everyone carries their own version of how reality should be, but not everyone realizes how inherently fragile that paradigm really is. For one interested in psychology and philosophy it might be a given that reality lies in the 'Eye of the Beholder' and that no matter how much we want to be in control of said reality, it can never match our projected expectations, but for others life can be confusing, willful and disappointing. Kids especially are caught up in this game of life and when they get dealt a card that blocks their pursuit of happiness, it seems injust.

As a young boy who spent time in a boarding school I frequently got to hear the words: 'It's that way because I say so' and 'It's the way things are', which frustrated me to no end, because it seemed to me a major cop-out on reason. Simply because an adult was not interested or too tired to explain exactly why they did the things they did (which usually involved me not getting my way) did not make the acceptance of an outcome of an event any easier. In fact it only made me want to rebel some more. Still as an adult it has left me with an inflated sense of justice and ill will towards those who abuse positions of power.

And because young adults are trying to establish their own reality in more dynamic ways that older generations (who have settled down more) it is especially hard for them to accept 'the way things are' whether or not it truly is a fight worth fighting (young people always have more energy to fight the system -- how unjust is that?). But even when we are older it seems fate conspires against us as bosses impose their iron will on employees, for the sake of business or their own ego. Wives and husbands struggle with finding what it means for them to be in an equal relationship. Adults still seeking approval, love or recognition from parents, too old to reciprocate. And, to make the cycle complete, if an adult fails to find peace in their own reality, they struggle with their children who's time has now come, in turn complicating theirs. And even harsher realities where extreme life altering events occur, like finding out one has cancer or the death of a child. Life can seem very fickle indeed and very unjust.

So it is good that there are children books. And sometimes it's through metaphor and parable that we understand why it is that we struggle with this universal force that seems out to get us. Or maybe it just temporarily soothes our frustrations born out of powerlessness with stories of childlike victory over supreme evil. Be it a temporary realignment of our fragile ego or a deeper understanding of our own psyche, stories have the power to show us a path away from self-inflicted suffering. Especially young adult novels, because they speak from a more innocent viewpoint, a moment in time where the perceived weak triumph over insurmountable odds, a universal and uncaring injustice, to be free to live.