The Futility of Fretting Over Fairness

Mitch Arnold • September 22, 2024

Recently, I was blessed with the opportunity to discuss the topic of fairness with two older men who have suddenly come face-to-face life’s occasionally unfair nature. Both are in their mid seventies, and each is living a retirement that is not what he prepared for, imagined or seemingly deserved.


Because both had worked hard and saved responsibly for their retirement, money isn’t an issue for them. Similarly, both had been physically active, exercised regularly and applied the same discipline to their bodies as they did to their retirement savings. One had even run several marathons! Unfortunately, those efforts didn’t prevent them from being stricken with neurological disorders that severely impact their mobility and ability to perform simple daily tasks.


Neither did anything to induce their physical struggles. In fact, they did everything they could to enjoy physical health well into their later years; yet, that was taken from them. It’s like obeying the speed limit, but getting a ticket, when everyone else speeds past you. It just isn’t fair.


Fairness is something we all expect, but don’t always get. Sure, a lucky break or two is welcome, but we don’t expect luck. We do expect fairness, and it stings when it is taken from us. Unfortunately, when this happens, there is little that we can do about it.


When both of these guys retired, because their physical abilities far exceeded those of their peers, their initial retirement years went almost exactly like they had planned. They continued to travel, golf and exercise regularly, never envisioning what was about to happen. Why would they? They had sacrificed, and had earned the lifestyle that they were enjoying.


As is my nature, after listening to their struggles, I tried to paint silver linings in the clouds that hung over their heads, and encouraged them to look at the bright side of things. Both told me that they admired how I was able to stay positive in the face of adversity, but that they weren’t there yet. They haven’t yet been able to give up on fairness.


Living with significant physical challenges for more than 50 years has taught me that it’s futile to fret over fairness. Put simply, we don’t get to decide what we deserve. We can live perfect lives, follow all the rules and check off all the boxes of virtue, and bad things can still happen.


What we do get to decide are our attitudes and how we approach our challenges when bad things happen. We also need to realize that the energy that we spend fretting over fairness is better directed toward improving our situations. The US Navy SEALs know this, and incorporate it into their training.


In his New York Times bestseller, “Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10,” retired Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell recounts an experience in his SEAL “Hell Week” when one of the trainers randomly selected a trainee and completely trashed the trainee’s quarters when he was out training. This poor trainee had experienced more than 20 straight hours of grueling physical tests, and another 20-plus hours awaited after a couple of hours of sleep.


Instead of sleep that night, the trainee had to restore order to his room, though its trashed condition was no fault of his own, before inspection in just two short hours. Imagine the injustice he must have felt. A mentally weak person, under such extreme physical and mental exhaustion, and experiencing such extreme injustice, would have lashed out or simply collapsed. A SEAL can’t do that. If someone makes a terrible mistake on a mission or the enemy foils a near-perfect plan, a SEAL can’t spend time and mental resources being angry at the injustice and feeling sorry for himself. Doing so would get him, and likely others, killed.



Likewise, when things are tough for us, and we are angry because fairness has turned its back on us, we need to summon whatever mental toughness we have in order to resist the urge to feel sorry for ourselves. Only when we quit fretting over fairness can we focus on improving our situations.

It's Been Years

By Mitch Arnold • July 27, 2025
When I was a kid growing up in Loup City, I went to Ord at least once per month to visit my grandparents and other relatives, and it wasn’t a trip that I was always eager to make. It wasn’t that I disliked seeing my relatives, but there were other things that I would have rather been doing. I sure couldn’t imagine making that trip on my own volition, but that’s exactly what I did a couple of Saturdays ago. My grandfather has been gone for more than 40 years now, and grandmother, more than 20. I can still remember them vividly, as well as their house and the heaping bowls of fudge and caramel covered ice cream I enjoyed in their kitchen as I listened to Grandpa tell stories between drags on his unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes. Though I resisted those trips as a kid, if given the chance now, I would love to make one more visit, but time has moved on, and all I have are the memories. I’m a grandpa myself now, and that has given me a new perspective on the fleeting moments that we enjoy with loved ones. Years pass quickly these days, and with each new calendar we pin to the wall, we lose touch with people and places from our past. New people and places come into our lives, and we push aside the past to make room for them. While some of that is necessary and a part of life, I think that it’s also important to stay in touch with our roots. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your uncles?” my wife asked as we began the three-hour trip from Omaha to Ord. “It’s been years,” I replied. We don’t have the family reunions like we used to, and because travel becomes difficult or impossible for older people, we don’t have the opportunities we once had to cross paths with them. If we’re going to see the people and places from our past, we have to make an effort to do so. That’s what I was doing on that Saturday morning. My hometown of Loup City is only a 30-minute drive from Ord and just slightly off the route between Omaha and Ord, so I also took the opportunity to tour the town I hadn’t seen in more than a year. I drove the sleepy streets I once roamed on my bike. I went past the church I attended through childhood, as well as the home I grew up in and the home where my maternal grandparents lived. I stopped at my grandfather's grave and symbolically shared a beer with him. After lunch at the marina at the lake just outside of town, where I spent many summer afternoons boating with my family, I headed to Ord, driving past my aunt and uncle’s farm that I hadn’t seen in more than a decade. The Ord visit with my uncles was brief, but more rewarding than I had imagined. The laughter, smiles and stories were so familiar that it was hard to believe that it had been years since we had seen each other. I even bumped into three cousins that I hadn’t seen in years. As we headed back to Omaha, I thought about those childhood visits that I once resisted and began to appreciate why my parents insisted that we make them. Time is fleeting and waits for no one, but we can’t get so caught up in the present that we forget the past and the people and places that helped shape us into the people we are. If you have been thinking about the people and places from your past, take that as a sign that you need to visit them. Don’t just wait for the next opportunity, make that opportunity happen. You will be glad that you did.

Surviving a Collision with a Garbage Truck

By Mitch Arnold • June 29, 2025
I got hit by a garbage truck the other day, but was able to recover quickly, because it wasn’t the first time it happened, and it won’t be the last. It’s an unfortunate reality that everyone will occasionally run into a garbage truck through no fault of their own. (see ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck” below) One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly. So I asked, ‘Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!’ This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck.’ He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it! Sometimes they’ll dump it on you. Don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don’t take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. The garbage truck in my latest collision was a prospect who I had never talked to, before picking up the phone and calling him about a position I was helping a client fill. Within seconds of introducing myself, his aggressive tone began to dominate. He demanded that I tell him who my client was and how much they were going to pay. I assured him that I would answer those questions once we determined that his background was a good fit and that he was interested in learning more. Finally, I offered to arrange a call at his convenience, when we could discuss the opportunity further. We never got to that point. After sending him some information on the opportunity, he repeated his earlier demands, this time through text messaging. In our exchange, I was able to determine that his background wasn’t a fit, so I thanked him for his time and asked if he could confidentially refer anyone. He responded by calling me a “god-awful recruiter.” I know that I’m a pretty good recruiter, and was fairly certain that he was a miserable person (garbage truck), but I held off on sharing those opinions with him. Instead, I just backed away, recalling “The Law of the Garbage Truck.” I wasn’t going to spend any more mental energy on him than I already had, and I surely wasn’t going to dump his garbage on someone else. Furthermore, I knew that my faith in humanity would soon be restored when I visited the gym over the lunch hour for my daily workout. Knowing that there are already too many garbage trucks wandering around out there, I try to be just the opposite, and the gym gives me a place to put that effort into practice. Because I appreciate friendly, positive people, I try to be one myself. I attempt to learn the names of the people I routinely see, like the front desk people, custodian and regular members, and I try to make connections with those who are receptive. And, I try to do that all with a smile, regardless of how I feel, even if I’m still stinging from a garbage truck collision. Per usual, the gym atmosphere didn’t disappoint. I exchanged pleasantries with people who expect me to be there at the same time almost every day, and enjoyed conversations that completely erased the garbage truck from my memory. Getting older has taught me that kindness pays dividends, and that even when it can’t save you from garbage truck collisions, it can certainly make them easier to recover from. Take the time to create a refuge of kindness that you can rely on when something like a garbage truck threatens to ruin your day. It’s worth the effort.