Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Strict fairness would mean each person gets exactly what they have earned, nothing more. A fair amount of what has been good in your life would not survive that rule: the chance that came to you rather than to someone equally able, the kindness nobody made you deserve. The looseness that lets undeserved harm through is the same looseness that lets mercy through.

When something lands unfairly against you, the unfairness is real and worth naming. It is also worth counting, on a quieter day, the times it fell the other way. Notice one piece of good fortune you did not earn, and pass a little of it along.