"Is it fair?" "Does it matter?"

Just this morning, I met a friend in court and we chat up. She told me about a case she is handling. It's a fatal accident case. The victim was a 19 year old lady. She was, needlessly to say, at the prime of her youth. She was a smart girl and the only child of a family who loved her dearly. She was a pillion rider in a motor car accident.

The facts seemed sketchy but what is clear is that the motorcar, which collided into the bike she was on, was driven by a drunk driver.  And this is the truly sad part. Embrace yourself.

The young lady had in her bag a little dog. Upon collision, the helmet, the lady and the dog were flung off at all directions. As the lady was lying motionless on the road, the dog struggled back to her to be by her side. I guess her dog was the last living thing she saw before she departed. She left behind her inconsolable parents and a loyal dog.

My friend told me she went to the victim's house (her parents just bought her a house) and cried when her parents told her that they had to give away the dog because they couldn't take it.  And this is the part of my letter that is relevant. Before we departed, my friend turned to me and asked pointblank, "Is it fair?" Before I could answer her, she'd left.

That question lingered on me like a dye-in-the-vein stain. "Is it fair?"  My spirit and mind went on a tailspin; the vortex of which is a bottomless pit. "Is it fair?" is a rhetorical question, that is, it is a question that one doesn't expect a corresponding answer. It is a chicken-and-the-egg question. It's like asking a bald fellow, "Why no hair?"

In the end, after searching for the answer from all conceivable theological and secular points of view, I believe it brings the questioner to where he or she first started off; the proverbial square one.

So, my answer to that question, "Is it fair?" is "Does it matter?" Seriously, does it matter? I know this sounds curt and unfeeling...heartless even. But does it matter that the victim was a young lady at the prime of her youth?  Does it matter that she is innocent? Does it matter that her life is cut-short when there may well be others more deserving of such a fate? You may ask: Why do I take this seemingly resigned stand?

When my friend asked me, "Is it fair?", I was at first fired up to answer her. I was going to tell her that the accident had a natural cause. And possibly a long chain of causation. Although I am not privy to all the facts, I hypothesize that the victim was riding home. She happened to be where she was when the accident happened, or else there wouldn't be an accident to speak about in the first place.

I also guessed that the drunk driver had a habit of drinking. Blame it on his genes? Then, he too happened to be where he was in order for the accident to happen. The entire accident happened in that way because of a naturalistic convergence of factors like those elements of nature that come together to form the perfect storm.

One can say that the accident in question could happen to anyone traveling on that day, at that time and on that specific location. But that won't be accurate. That unfortunate accident could only happen to that lady and that drunk driver and no one else. It happened because there was no other way or to no other people that it could happen to. If it were someone else taking either of their places, the choices made would have been different and the accident would have never happened the way it happened.

I know I sound like a broken record; and an old, outdated record at that. My above statement also seems tautological, that is, an endless repetition of idea without any added clarity. But that's my point.

And my point is this: things happen, good or bad, whether we like it or not, regardless of our protest or design, because that's how this world is wound up and we are just "a snowflake in an avalanche".

Here is one home experiment you can try out. Wind up a mechanized rabbit and then place it randomly on a table and see where it ends up. I can bet with you it ends up in a different spot, different angle, different direction each time you set it off. At times, it may even fall off the table and break into different parts. Each time, each outcome cannot be duplicated.

That simple experiment somewhat mirrors our own life in the larger scheme of events that either happens to us or happens past us. We practically have no control over them. It happens and it happens however way it happens. The beginning, I believe, was a big winding up which started a chain reaction and the rest is historical eventuality. I can't add any more clarity to that.

Carl Sagan once quipped, "If you want to make an apple pie, you'll have to first create the universe." My take from it is that you cannot view an event or an accident in isolation. They are all connected in the larger scheme of things. Like the butterfly effect, a fluttering of a butterfly's wing in a remote part of Africa may very well end up a tornado in New York.
Causes that leads to specific events, whether good or bad, are too multivariate for enumeration.

So the next time you want the "causes" of that mouth-watering apple pie, you might just have to trace back 13.7 billion years or even further! Just a stretch of a metaphor, if you don't mind. And mind you, it is also an exercise in futility. So, in the end, it really doesn't matter.

Now, going back to that question, "Is it fair?" I'd repeat, "It really doesn't matter."

As a Christian, I can tell you a hundred and one reasons why God "calvinistically" allowed it,  "armenistically"  permitted it, or "naturalistically" washed His hands over it. Or, for some religions, I can solemnly utter these three words, "it is fate."

But this back-and-forward theological tug of war is of little practical value because the raw reality remains unchanged: a life lost cannot be returned. As for the questions, "why must it be my daughter?" or "it's not fair, right?", they make for good coffee table talk but it brings the life no closer to her body.

Jesus was once asked a similar question and his reply can be summed up in these words: Look forward. Remember, the past is a prologue (an introduction or a lesson) to our future. Although i am in no position to fault a grieving soul when he bombards the object of his providence questions like "Why her?" "Why me?" "Is it fair?" "Don't you care?", I think when all the theological dust has settled and grief has taken a momentary leave, the best advice I can give is, "look forward."

Because life goes on, and the living has to live and the dead has to "die", looking forward tends to keep our focus on reasons to live on and looking back tends to keep our focus on reasons to give up.  Most importantly, isn't this the wish of our  loved ones who have gone before us? Surely, they want us to continue living because that would be our wish for them too should the situation be reversed.

I once read how a psychologist consoled a husband who recently lost his wife. He appeared inconsolable and the psychologist asked him, "What if the one who died was you instead of your wife?" That somehow got his attention and he replied, "No, no, if I would to go before her, she can't take it. Her world would collapse. That woman cannot handle it without me." Then, the psychologist turn to the grieving man and said, "Isn't it now for the best that she went before you?"

Let me end with what Einstein once said, "Time exists so that everything does not happen all at once." Maybe this was what God intended, time, that is. As another thought experiment, can you imagine a world where everything happens all at once. On an anthropomorphic level, imagine your birth is also your death. And on a cosmological level, imagine the command "let there be light" is immediately followed by the command "a new heaven and earth."

Although this is an imperfect thought experiment, I hope you see how meaningless, or incomprehensible, our lives can be.

Time is spread out so that there's a time for everything to happen at its time and not for everything to happen all at once. A time for birth. A time for celebration. A time for death. A time for grief. A time to overcome. A time to rejoice.

 So, is it fair? Looking forward, I don't think it matters anyhow. A better question, once the grieving process has come full circle, is, "What now then?" And mind you, the journey from "Is it fair?" to "What now then?" is a long, long, long one.

Cheers and have a victorious week ahead!