Fair Not
Awards season is here.
With its snubs
And sweeps.
Winners weep
Losers smile.
The red carpet casts its rosy glow up
Onto the best and worst dressed alike.
You have arrived.
Though next year
You may be home.
None of it is fair.
Of course.
Because life isn’t.
But it feels like it should be.
And that should.
Eats away at our insides.
Letting go of the idea
That life should be fair
While fight so hard for justice
(A slightly different
Though related idea.)
Can feel weird.
Here’s the thing about fairness.
In the tender summer after my college sophomore slump
I was a camp counselor.
And when there was pie for desert
I had to slice it.
I tried so hard to cut the pie
Into even pieces.
So that everyone got an equal share.
So that everyone got their fair share.
BUT I ALWAYS FAILED.
Every time a slighted nine year old girl
Would cry out
In her high, disappointed - outraged voice:
My piece is smaller!
It’s not fair!
Did I apologize?
I did.
At first.
Did I eventually tell them the truth.
Life isn’t fair.
I did.
I couldn’t do better than life.
Somewhere around the time
The rise of July
Turned into the fall of August
I noticed that the girls never complained
That it wasn’t fair
When their piece was bigger.
Where was the indignation then?
But unlike the billionaires
They didn’t gloat either.
They just quietly enjoyed
Their bigger piece of pie.
Did they even notice it wasn’t fair.
Or did the girls with the unfair amount of yumminess
Just move on to their daydreams
About skinny dipping in the lake that night.
Letting pleasure lead to pleasure.
I never wondered then
As I do now
What energetic field
Had directed which pieces of pie to whom.
For them to relish or complain about.
Maybe the Great Knowing Mystery
Was protecting one of those pre-teens
From her sugar spikes.
Maybe toughening her up
For a bigger fight.
Maybe rewarding her for a hard won
Inner victory with self esteem.
It was a Quaker Camp and this talkative arty Jew
Was astounded by meeting circles.
The older girls and counselors often spoke
I can’t remember what any of them said.
All I can remember is the smallest girls
My girls
Moved by an invisible something
Standing and saying - in the smallest of voices
I never thought I would be able to speak in meetings
And now here I am speaking.
It was so meta.
None of them ever spoke of the pie.
And neither did I.
I wasn’t as adept then as I am now
At noticing what I was noticing.
And naming it.
And I sometimes wonder
Would I be so adept at it
If life was fair.
If I hadn’t spent time sulking about slights.
And sitting with myself
Trying to listen.
If I hadn’t been gifted
With the love of language.
Sometimes you get a big piece.
Sometimes you get a small piece.
And of course sometimes
You are not even at the table.
Here we come up to issues of privilege.
And passion.
Being let in
Being locked out.
Yes we can make our own luck.
To a certain degree.
We can convert unfairness to passion.
And we can share our luck.
To try to make things more fair.
There was one other pie that offered a different model.
At Brown the year before
My friend group and I discovered a common room
That we dubbed The Funny Room.
There was a cutout in one of the walls
And we would do shows in it.
One of my first stages.
At dinner we would decide
To gather at The Funny Room
And someone would grab a Boston cream pie
And sneak it out of The Ratty.
We’d sit on the built in bench that wrapped around
The oddly shaped
Small room.
Turn down the lights.
Pass a joint around.
Then when the munchies hit
We would start to chant
Oh Great Pie.
Yes I do think we were longing for some bigger thing.
No we didn’t know how to name it
Or call out for it.
So the pie would come out.
Along with a spoon.
And they got passed around together.
When you were handed the pie
You were handed the spoon.
And you got one bite.
The pie was passed around until it was gone.
Everyone getting one bite at a time.
So maybe the last lap wasn’t a full one
And everyone didn’t get the same amount of bites
But I don’t think it was that we were high
Or that we weren’t nine year old girls.
I think it seemed fair
Because it was our pie.
It never got divided up.
We shared it.
Fair comes from a word meaning beauty.
And life may not be fair
When we think of how it is divided.
But maybe when we think about fair
Like fair maiden (are there maidens anymore can a goth girl be fair?)
Beautiful
Life is fair then.
Life is beautiful.
And that beauty is how we let go of should.
Fight for justice.
And get back to work.
Let the awards land where they will.
Infinitely Yours
xx
Beth