It was a typical school day when I was sitting in a café trying to hustle my last-minute work for my professors, but unfortunately, I was surrounded by the bustling noise of people playing video games, unbothered by their own behavior while projecting a sense of nuisance to others. As I looked out the window, I saw two young men hanging on the edge of the balcony doing construction work. One was mixing cement while the other was trying to install the window, and all this was done on the second floor without any safety gear attached to their waist. It was surely dangerous, but to us, sitting inside the AC room, this kind of scene has become normalized that our eyes were accustomed to. That moment made me realize the unfairness of life.
When I was young, I often thought that life has been unfair to me because I usually counted the amount of things, I don’t have including people, money, and other matristic things. When I see others have what I don’t have, I got disillusioned and believed that it was destined for me or that I didn’t deserve to have all those nice things like others. Until I grew up a little when I began to realize just how lucky my life has been. I met more people, traveled to more places, and lived through different experiences. I understand better that the fairness in life should not be measured by how much we don’t have. We need to reevaluate what we have instead. I think I am grateful to have good health when I see someone sick with uncurable diseases. I am thankful to have a good bed, enough food to eat, and amazing people around me. I am blessed to have the opportunity to attend a good school, getting the education that not many people could afford. I am beyond thrilled to be granted a chance to travel the world to see life beyond my comfort zone and expectations. I can choose to continue to look at what I don’t have when I compare myself to others or I can simply count my blessings for not having to work in a scorching sun and heat in order to buy food for my family at home. Those young men working on the construction were not that much older than me, but I definitely have way more opportunities in life than them. As I sit inside that café, I can choose to compare myself to all other rich kids because I don’t have a fancy car or an updated iPhone and believe that life was not fair to me, or I can simply count my blessings knowing that what I have is already more than enough.