Let’s get something out of the way upfront: life doesn’t care about your plans, your dreams, or even your hard work. It’s not out to get you, but it’s also not sitting around plotting ways to hand you a gold star for being a good person. Fairness, at least the kind we all think we’re entitled to, isn’t a cosmic law. It’s a human invention—a set of rules we made up to help us get along and not rip each other’s faces off over who gets the last slice of pizza.
But here’s the catch: the world doesn’t run on our rules. Fairness is an agreement between people, not some universal force built into the fabric of existence. That’s why bad things happen to good people. It’s why someone less qualified might get the job you wanted. It’s why your neighbor can somehow afford a new car every year while you’re still driving something with duct tape holding the bumper together.
The belief that life should be fair often sets us up for frustration. It’s a mental booby trap. You work hard, treat people well, and expect the universe to send a thank-you card in the form of a promotion, a new relationship, or some other reward. When it doesn’t, you feel cheated. Like someone broke a contract.
But here’s the thing—there is no contract. There never was.
That might sound a little bleak, but it’s actually liberating. Because once you let go of the idea that life owes you fairness, you can start focusing on what actually matters.
The Myth of Cosmic Justice
Fairness feels like a moral imperative, something the universe should enforce. But the truth is, fairness is a human construct. It’s how we teach kindergarteners to share crayons and how societies attempt to maintain some semblance of order. But the universe itself? It’s indifferent. It doesn’t hand out justice like a traffic cop. It’s more like the weather—it just does what it does, and you deal with it.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care about fairness. On the contrary, fairness is incredibly important in human relationships and communities. But it’s something we create and uphold, not something we can expect to happen naturally. When we demand fairness from life itself, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.
Letting Go of “Should”
So much of our unhappiness comes from clinging to the idea that things should be a certain way. People should be kind. Hard work should pay off. Life should reward good behavior.
But all those “shoulds” are just stories we tell ourselves. And when reality doesn’t match the story, we feel angry, frustrated, or defeated. Letting go of those “shoulds” doesn’t mean you stop caring about fairness or justice—it means you stop expecting the universe to deliver them on a silver platter.
What Really Matters
Once you let go of the fairness myth, you can start asking better questions. Instead of “Why isn’t this fair?” you can ask, “What can I do about this?” Instead of dwelling on what you deserve, you can focus on what’s possible.
When you stop expecting life to balance the scales for you, you realize that your power lies in how you respond to the chaos. You didn’t get the job? You can wallow, or you can figure out what’s next. Life threw you a curveball? You can let it define you, or you can learn how to hit it out of the park.
A New Perspective
Here’s the paradox: when you stop expecting fairness, life starts to feel a little less unfair. You’re no longer keeping score, constantly measuring what you’ve given versus what you’ve received. Instead, you’re focusing on the things that are within your control—your choices, your actions, your attitude.
This doesn’t mean you have to be okay with injustice or mistreatment. It means recognizing that fairness, when it exists, is a human achievement, not a universal guarantee. And that’s empowering. Because while you can’t control everything, you can control how you show up in the world. You can strive to be fair, even when life isn’t. You can choose to do what’s right, even when it’s hard.
Life doesn’t owe you fairness. But once you let go of that expectation, you’ll find that it doesn’t matter as much as you thought it did. Because fairness isn’t about what you get—it’s about how you live.