Life Will Never Be Fair

Everyone has to deal with disrespect on a regular basis. In a society, there are always going to be people who automatically treat you with respect and those who don't. The question is how do you deal with those people that don't?

Every morning on the way into work someone cuts me off. I'm pretty sure that I am not alone. There are those that get "road rage" and those who simply let it roll off. The fact of the matter is that the person who cut you off, actually is disrespecting you. They are showing a complete lack of understanding for anyone else around them. Still, you have the choice to get upset or to ignore the situation and move on.

The same thing goes for every other aspect of life. There are always going to be people who will not respect you, whether they are face to face, on the phone, or in a car. Some people just do not see the need to show respect to anyone else. While the majority of us would agree that kind of behavior is unacceptable, who is going to enforce it?

There's no rule book in life that we have to follow, saying that we need to be nice to everyone. As a matter of fact, many people interpret niceness as weakness. You're not going to get a response from a police officer when you report someone being rude to you. They just don't care. Why? Well for starters, it's not against the law. As the old saying goes: "Life isn't fair." We don't have to treat people with respect if we don't want to. No one owes you anything.

We expect a certain amount of respect only because of our social expectations taught to us through our parents and social experiences. We learn how to treat people based on how people respond to us and how we see people treating each other. We all have a built in gauge for human interaction that we don't even realize is there. With every interaction we are gauging response reactions and deciding how much we like this person. There's really a spectrum of positive, neutral, negative and a lot of gray area in between.

It's strange how we do this without thinking about it. We only know that we like someone or dislike them. We rarely are self-aware enough to see this process in action. We typically only understand it in retrospect.

"I really liked him. He was funny and really nice."

"Well, I don't like him anymore. I think because he did this, this, and that...."

So what happens when someone fails our expected level of respect? We get angry, offended, and some of us will do anything we can to get back at them for it. Unfortunately, "getting back" at someone usually has the opposite effect that we want. Our goal by getting back at them is to teach them a lesson, right? Do they ever learn that lesson when you do? Nope. Instead, they get even more upset back at you and attempt to retaliate in the same or worse way than you did initially.

That's why you see so many disagreements and fights literally start over nothing and escalate until they are out of control. So how do we control the situation so that it doesn't get to that point?

One of my favorite movie quotes of all time sums it all up: "Control is an illusion, you infantile ego-maniac. Nobody knows what's going to happen next." ~Nicole Kidman as Dr. Lewicki in Days of Thunder

No truer words were ever spoken. We all want to control things that are out of our control. Some times we just have to let go and let things roll off even if we can't agree or see the fairness in it. Life isn't fair and we just have to accept that it will always be that way.