ABOUT FAIRNESS
Maggie H is a Global Explorer and Wellness Advocate from Hong Kong. Among many spiritual endeavors, Maggie practices and leads Qigong meditation to help people around the world find their inner balance. Find out more about this and other Eastern Philosophy & Meditation practices every month on the ICBRKR blog.
This is a story I heard that impelled me to ruminate on what fairness is in life.
There was a brother and a sister whose mother had passed away when they were young. After some time, the father also left home, completely abandoning them. They grew up from one relative's place to another relative's believing that they had nobody else but only each other to rely on in the world.
They were not quite orphans but might as well be as they never heard from the father; hence, they received absolutely no support while they were going through school. Time went by, they were able to finish school and got themselves a job to support themselves. Over time, they got married and had a couple of kids each. They finally got to enjoy the normal family life they had dreamed of for so long.
One day, the sister received a call from an unknown number. It was the long-lost father who called for his elderly welfare policy. Since he had two children on his record, he wasn't able to fully enjoy the welfare benefits for an elderly person living alone, so he was asking them to either support him or take their names off his family register.
The sister was annoyed with his shameless request. She spoke with her brother and they both had no idea how to understand the father. Where was he when they needed him the most and now when he had become old and needed help, he barged in and demanded help from them?
After spending some painful time, the sister went to see a monk who could see people's past lives. When the sister finished telling the outrageous story, the monk began telling her another story as an answer.
A long long time ago, three close friends studied together and passed exams to work in the palace for the king. All three were quite successful at what they did but one of them was a bit better than the two and so the king favored him a bit more. The two friends were jealous so they falsely accused him of treason. The king was upset and disappointed, so he took all his possessions and killed him as well as his family of three generations. He tearfully begged to clear his name but the two friends ignored the dying man’s request. The one who was falsely accused was your father and the two friends were born as his children.
After hearing the monk's touching story, the sister said that maybe it's time for them to forgive the father and help him out with whatever they could. Then the monk yelled at the sister, “what do you mean by forgiving him, it's the other way around, you should beg him for forgiveness for the unnecessary pain he had gone through and pay back as much as you could in this lifetime.”
Whenever we feel the pain of unfairness, just take a moment and think, it may have been something caused by us some lifetimes ago. If we understand how the law of cause and effect works, what seems to be so unfair could be the fairest proposition in the end.