“Somewhere Along the Lines, I Got Off Thinking Life Was going to Be Fair…”

            Over the last few months  I have realized that I have a bone to pick to with the world. My issue is that in life, sometimes people get screwed. Its nothing new, I’m quite positive its been happening for a long time. In fact, I’m sure of it, as Shakespeare wrote an entire genre of short stories around it. Tragedies at their best. And I suppose, they were as successful as they were because they cause feelings to arise in people. You burn, you crunch, you roll the story line over in your head to figure out where it all went wrong. And in any good tradgety, there is no solution. Going forward, there was no way to know the expected outcome. Of course, looking backward, it was all there in the plain text; but it was much more cryptic at the time, and the signs could never really be seen.          

       When my grandparents were young, the had an incredible story. They were both born in Mexico, my grandfather into a life of poverty, and my grandmother into a life of comfort. My grandpa had come to work in the United States in his young twenties, quickly moving up the ranks on the railroad lines. He was successful and made quite a bit of money working and saving all he had for ten years. He’d gone back home to visit his family, when he saw my grandmother for the first time since he’d left. When he’d gone to the United States, she was but a little girl, but now, she was a gorgeous woman, who happened to be engaged to another man. My grandmother’s father told him “You know Lucy is a stubborn woman. If you can convince her to go out with you, then you have my blessing.”         

    Well, my grandpa must have been a Casanova, because he took her out, and Lucy soon forgot about marrying the other man in her life. And as any romantic story would have it, there must be some drama. Her ex-fiancé was enraged when he found that Lucy wouldn’t have him, so he threatened to kill her (as many crazed lovers would agree is always a good idea when in a tragedy). Lucy had to move to Mexico City to live with her aunties to keep her safe, while the rest of her family back home planned her wedding to my grandfather, in secret.          

  She came back and they got married, and immediately they left to go to the United States. My grandmother was  smart woman, so of course they’d already made a plan. My grandfather had ten years worth of wages saved, and they were going to invest in apartment complexes or some other form of lucrative real estate. (As I said earlier, any good story has drama, so brace yourself as the rest of the story unfolds.) My grandfather had all of his earnings put away in the bank, in which he’d had an aunt co-sign in case of a family emergency. My grandfather had been paying money each month to his immediate family to help them with their bills, as they had always been struggling to say out of the streets. When Manual and his bride arrive newly married from Mexico, Manual discovered that his aunt had drained all of the money in his bank account for “future payments that you owe us. Now that you have your new wife and family, you wont be able to make payments to support us, so we will take the money now.”         

   I have been told that my grandma can still remember sitting in a little rented apartment in downtown Los Angeles, on a little cheap rented couch, listening to my livid grandfather screaming at his family to give the money back. But it was gone. Every part of it gone. This is the part of the story that gets me infuriated. Someone like Lucy, who had all of her things in row: married a good man, they had a plan, they had their finances lined up….and just like that …gone.           

 Now if that was where the story ends it would hardly be a tragedy. It would just a sad thing that happened at one point in someone’s life.  But the story goes on. My grandpa was injured while on the rail roads. He was paralyzed in his legs. At the time, the good news was that they could surgically repair the damage and hopefully in time he could return to work. However, keep in mind that this is tragedy, so of course that is not what happens. The surgery was botched, and my grandpa was permanently injured. He could no longer work at all and had no means of supporting his family. There was a malpractice suit, and he did win a large portion of money. So, at this point in the story, it doesn’t look so badly. However, he invested the money in foreign stocks, and with a sudden shift in economy, it was all but dust.           

 So at this point, my grandpa is disabled, horribly depressed, and constantly drinking to deal with his state of affairs. My grandma now has had seven babies in the course of nine years, and is supporting her entire family with her seamstress business out of the back of her home. There were years where they were on public assistance to make the ends meet. And as a perfect cherry on our tragic Sundae, the last baby was born with a birth defect, and died after a few months because his heart was failing.           

 Now, this is the point where I am angry. I have to believe that at some point my grandma looked at her life and screamed “This is NOT what I signed up for!” She had done the planning, worked her hardest, and made the smartest decisions that she was able. And yet, in the end, she was still screwed. She went from having maids and no clue how to cook or clean or mend, to having babies, running a household, and disabled emotionally  unavailable (at time disputed abusive) husband. I have to think that she looked around and said “This isnt FAIR. I never wanted this. This wasn’t what I planned for. This wasn’t how things were supposed to turn out.”          

  And I do know that life isnt fair, but I think as people when the truth of this statement hits and truly affects us, it can be astounding. For me it makes me angry at the whole system. People say “God doesn’t just give us life on a silver platter.” But question is “Why not?” Why couldn’t the whole thing be designed so that good plans would mostly end the right way? And even if there were bad things happened, couldn’t there still be a sense of justice? Now please don’t get me wrong, I am not asking why bad things happen to good people, because I believe that this is an issue of rights and the infliction of those rights. I am asking “Why do plans fall through, and why does life run its course as it would, leaving you sometimes very broken as a result, despite how much you tried to get it all right?”

That question makes me very angry. I suppose in some ways it makes me feel helpless to the course of life, or the will of God, if you call it that. That life is not something that you can expect and enjoy, but instead it is something that happens to you, and despite your efforts to prepare, you might not end up on top. In my mind, this all seems a little cruel. And I think the worst part is, you cannot decide that you simply don’t want to play. When you are a kid, and you realize that the rules of the game are skewed, and that you might not win no matter how good you are, most kids would pick up their marbles and go home. “The game isnt fair, so I don’t want to play.”

But what happens if the game is life, and no one gives you the option of quitting? Its not like one can decide to go an sit in their closet for the rest of their lives simply because its not fair. Live moves and it goes, and you wake up in the morning and you move with it. You go to your job, you work your damnedest, you try to play when you can, you try to have the most normal family possible, and it all just happens. You have no choice to make it stop. And that to me is cruel. In a sick way it reminds me of going to an outdoor concert, where the security guard wont let you bring in any water, yet you know that once inside and scorching at 90 degrees, you are going to have to pay 7 dollars for a bottle of water. You are getting screwed and you know it. Yet there is nothing you can do to make it stop.

It is at this point that I say yet, this is not the end of the conversation. If if stopped here, I would just be a whinny child, and there has to be a point to it all. So let me let you in to the struggle that I experienced while I thought on all these things. It came to me one night when I was rolling over all of it in my mind. And the point is this: Have you ever been around a young child that had been given everything they’ve wanted?  They’re obnoxious. And believe me, I work with children in one of the richest cities in Orange County. People like this walk around with a sense of entitlement a mile long. If they are thirsty, they cannot imagine why you would not want to get up and get them a glass of water. And when you bring the water, they will raise their eye brow and ask “was it filtered water?” Now I understand that this example is a little harsh, but its so true if you think of any one person, adult or child that had always been given what they wanted. They are a pain in the ass to be around.           

And what’s more, they have no idea what it is to want anything. To truly crave something, to work for it, to fight for it, and to pine for it. And if anyone has ever had to save money or wait something, they’d know it is in this period that something extraordinary happens. Passion. Yes. Passion. Drive. Desire. Yearning. And we all know that things in life are much much sweeter when they are yearned after. When they have to be fought for. It invokes passion in us when we have to fight to stay in the game. It makes me desperately strong when I have to push to make things happen. It gives my life texture when I am forced to wake up in the morning and face a day so hard I wish I could have died.          

  So this brings me to think, what if the whole game is not cruel at all? What if it is like a good tragedy that is painfully wonderful? What if it is the pain of injustice that brings about the gift of passion? I have to think that maybe it is a God that loves me enough to not let me be obnoxious, yet instead leads me to a life of passion, drive and desire. I know that when asked about it, my grandma would say “Was I happy? I had no time to realize if I was happy or not! I was too busy having babies and taking care of my family.” Is she bitter that the money was gone and in the end it seemed that she was screwed? Not at all. In fact, she has lived a gorgeous life of texture. She is in her seventies, and has traveled to more countries than I could imagine. She is brave, she has integrity, she is loving, and she is the most giving person I can imagine.            

 So I suppose in the end, the I was wrong. Life is not supposed fair, Maybe never God intended it to be fair. Because I do not think I would sit here and tell you stories about my Grandma Lucy that lived in Mexico her whole life, and had maids, and never did anything worth mentioning. It was her amazing struggle that made her beautiful. And I thank God that he loves me enough to keep me from being obnoxious.