This is the title of a book Charles J. Sykes, wrote back in 1996. In 2007, he wrote another book called, "50 Rules Kids Won't Learn In School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education." The following list is included in this book and I thought it was interesting:
Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
I liked the list, and his line of thinking. Further down he mentions that parents can't "bubble-wrap their children" although this is in reference to protection from unfairness, but I somewhat agree. It's difficult to know when to let kids be kids, or in my case, boys be boys. I have a hard time with Cameron being out front riding his bike or skateboarding when one of us aren't out there. I get nervous. I think of the what-ifs. Then I think that he's fine if he's just going to the end of the street and back. Then I have visions of something happening and me thinking, "why didn't I just stick with my gut and NOT let him ride to the end of the street without me out there?" Horrible I know. But times are soooo different than we were kids. Mom and Dad didn't have to sit on the driveway every time we wanted to ride or bike or roller skate out front. In fact, we had free reign of the neighborhood. So long as we were home when the streetlights came on, we were fine. Hell, some days were were outside ALL DAY, only coming in for something to eat, and maybe go to the bathroom. Maybe. And did we wear helmets when we rode our bikes? No. Never. It used to be that every time grandparents or great-grandparents said, "Those were the good ol' days ..." we sort of rolled our eyes. Now I understand. Now I say it. Every generation has something in particular to reference when they say, "Those were the good ol' days..." Playing outside for 10 hours at a time, without a chaperone or a cell phone, was one of mine.
Okay, so after reading the following excerpt from his book (Chapter 1), I decided to order the book. I'll let you know how it turns out! Grab your cup of coffee; this is a great read!
Chapter One
Rule 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it.
The average teenager uses the phrase “It’s not fair” 8.6 times a day. The kids got it from their parents, who said it so often they decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever. When those parents started hearing it from their own kids, they understood Rule 1. Recognizing that life is not fair is a reality check. Hurricanes, tsunamis, plagues, earthquakes, and famines are not fair. Genetics is not fair. The good guys don’t always win. It’s not fair that some kids are taller, go through puberty early, or can eat gallons of Häagen Dazs without gaining a pound. It’s not fair that your average talentless D-list celebrity makes more money than all the math and science teachers in your school combined, and it’s not fair when the moronic suck-up gets the good job—but let’s not talk about Congress. “Life is unfair,” author Edward Abbey observed. “And it’s not fair that life is unfair.”
You can’t control the unfairness of the world. What you can control is the way you react. How you respond will determine what kind of a person you will become. “Everything can be taken from a man,” wrote concentration-camp survivor Viktor Frankl, “but . . . the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Usually, complaints about unfairness have nothing to do with justice, but are simply a reaction to finding out that you have to take responsibility for your life; that you are accountable for your actions; that your choices have consequences; that you have to work for money; that you have to fix something you broke; that you do not get rewards that others earned while you played video games. None of this is unfair.
Part of the problem is that so many young people know that they are special—they’ve been told so for years. They think that they deserve and are entitled to all sorts of self-actualization and perks that go with feeling so good about themselves. Some were under the impression that the “pursuit of happiness” meant that they were going to end up dating Jessica Alba, winning American Idol, and driving a Porsche. They will have to get used to disappointment. In the meantime, when they don’t get everything they expected, it seems . . . so unfair. But failing to get what you wanted is not unfair. Disappointment is a symptom of life, not a sign that the world is ripping you off. World hunger is unfair. AIDS is unfair. Not being able to go to the mall in your skanky T-shirt is not. Your share of the federal debt is unfair; having to turn off 50 Cent so other people in your house can sleep is not.
So you have a choice: you can either join the chorus of the permanently whining or recognize that you have to take responsibility for your life and learn to deal with it. Unfortunately, wrapping children in bubble wrap for much of their lives doesn’t really prepare them for coping with unfairness. Friends will let you down, good people will get sick, star athletes will blow out their knees, and jerks will win the lottery while a promising physicist at the very beginning of his career comes down with an incurable, crippling disease that destroys his chances for a normal life.
Stephen Hawking was not born in a wheelchair. The famous physicist was an active child, and even though he wasn’t good at ball games, he was able to take up rowing when he went to England’s Oxford University at the age of seventeen. He was one of the university’s most brilliant students—already recognized as a star—but in his third year at Oxford, Hawking began noticing that he was becoming increasingly clumsy, occasionally falling over for no reason. Shortly after his twenty-first birthday he was referred to a specialist, who began a variety of medical tests to find out what was happening to Hawking. Doctors couldn’t tell him what he had, except that it wasn’t multiple sclerosis. They told him that he had an unusual disease, that he would get worse, and that they had no treatment. “The realization that I had an incurable disease, that was likely to kill me in a few years, was a bit of a shock,” Hawking later wrote. “How could something like that happen to me? Why should I be cut off like this?” How could life be so unfair? But while he was in the hospital, Hawking saw a boy die of leukemia in the bed next to him.
“Clearly,” he concluded, “there were people who were worse off than me. At least my condition didn’t make me feel sick. Whenever I feel inclined to be sorry for myself I remember that boy.” But it got worse. His physical condition deteriorated progressively. He had nightmares about being put to death, and others in which he sacrificed his life to save others. “But I didn’t die” he wrote. “In fact, although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found, to my surprise, that I was enjoying life in the present more than before.” Even as his condition declined, his scientific reputation began to grow and he became engaged to his future wife. “That engagement changed my life,” he remembered. “It gave me something to live for.” After 1974, though, Hawking was no longer able to feed himself or get himself in and out of bed. Still, he managed to continue his scientific work.
But in 1985 Hawking suffered another blow. He contracted pneumonia, and in order to save his life, doctors had to perform a tracheotomy, an operation to open a direct airway through the neck, involving an incision in the trachea, or windpipe. Stephen Hawking, who had endured so much, and lost so much, now permanently lost the ability to speak, and required around-the-clock nursing care. He would have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, physically helpless. For a while, the only way this brilliant scientist could communicate was by spelling out words one letter at a time by raising his eyebrows when someone pointed at a chart of letters. Eventually, he was able to use a small computer and speech synthesizer to communicate. He has used them to write a book, dozens of scientific papers, and even public speeches. Hawking is now perhaps the world’s most famous physicist. He has three children, one grandchild, and twelve honorary degrees; is a fellow of The Royal Society and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; and has received many awards, medals, and prizes. Asked what he felt about his disability and the tragic twists of his life, Hawking responded: Not a lot. I try to lead as normal a life as possible, and not think about my condition, or regret the things it prevents me from doing, which are not that many. [Emphasis added.]
Hawking does not complain that life is unfair. How do your problems stack up next to his?
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