2. [Lightbulb Moment] Think of an experience when you realized that you suddenly understood an idea, a skill, or a concept you had been struggling with -- it might be something related to a class that you took or a specific athletic skill you were trying to perfect. For instance, you might think about trying to understand how to identify iambic pentameter in a poem or how to complete a Taylor Series problem in your Calculus class. Or you might consider trying to perfect your free throws and suddenly understanding how your follow-through was affecting your success. Write a narrative that tells the story of your movement toward understanding. How did you finally come to understand? What changed your perceptions and gave you a new understanding? Your paper should help readers understand how you felt to struggle with the idea or skill and then to understand.

Throughout my life, I have always been told that life isn’t fair. My mom has said this whenever my brother was mean to me, and my other brother would smugly tell me this when he was being mean to me. I felt resentment towards life. Why did it have to be unfair and what’s the point in living then? To me, it looked like a long time of being miserable. It wasn’t until very recently that I realized why life is unfair .

I suppose my journey to having this crystallizing moment started just over a year ago. When I was younger, my parents raised me to to be a Christian. However, after several years of unfairness and the apparent no existence of God, I became an Atheist. That was when I was entering freshman year in high school, but that didn’t last. Long story short, three years later I was depressed but then I was saved and became a Christian again. It kind of went like this.

Me: So yeah, I’m kind of your typical depressed teenager. Hormones and whatnot.
My friend: Hey, come with us to this religious youth convention thing. It’ll be fun and stuff.
Me: Okay, sure, why not.
Youth Convention Thing: *is fun and stuff*
Me: [insert typical ‘being saved’ dialogue.]
God: Woo.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go into a detailed autobiography about how Jesus is my savior and how you should accept him and blah blah blah. This isn’t that kind of paper, and trust me, this is important. All you need to know is that I’m Christian and that I believe in God and Jesus and all that religious stuff.

Let’s go back again, to just before I entered high school. About five or six years ago, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. While it was pretty frightening, although to be honest, I didn’t understand what was going on. Here’s an summary of what happened:

Dad: I’m sick!
Cancer: With me!
Mom: What? No! *cries*
Chemo: I’ll save you!
Mom and Dad: I hope this works.
Doctor: This will probably work.
Twelve year old me: What is going on I don’t understand ahhhh.
Cancer: *In remission*
Everybody: It worked and cancer will never return again! *foreshadowing*

And yeah, that’s pretty much how it went in a nutshell. True story. Anyways, about four months ago or so, my dad was diagnosed with cancer again. It was thought to be a rare type of cancer at first, but I think it was just the old cancer coming back. I’m unsure what exactly it is now, since it’s been pretty hectic and I’ve tried avoiding the subject with my mom because it usually ends with her crying and me feeling awkward and it’s not pretty.

So, you may be asking, “What does religion and cancer have to do with a realization about life being fair?” I’m glad you asked, hypothetical inquisitive reader. I realize that life is unfair. My life has been rather unfair in a lot of different moments, most recently my dad having cancer, as well as falling for a girl that lives in another country (but that’s a whole other story). And to be honest, I really have resented it. A lot. Like, here’s how a conversation with Life and me would go.

Life: Hey-
Me: I hate you.
Life: Wha-why? What have I ever done to you?
Me: I think the real question should be, “What have I done to you?”.
Life: Oh, you mean the face-
Me: Yeah.
Life: And you’re inability to gain a girlfriend...
Me: Yup.
Life: And the whole dad-cancer thing.
Me: Absolutely.
Life:...well, this is awkward.
Me: Yeah.
Life:...
Me:...
Life: Want some chocolate?
Me: Okay.
Me: Wait, this has nuts.
Life: :D

As I was saying, life is unfair. It’s inevitable, and the unfairness is perpetual. I was discontent with this. I never signed up for this. What did I seriously do to deserve this? I kept thinking this more and more frequently in the past few months. And I actually thought about it. I thought about life, and the hardships we must either survive or don’t survive. I thought about how many moments I have had that sucked, and the moments where things did not suck. I thought about how life is unfair for everybody, in some way or another. And then I thought about religion.

You see, I’m kind of a skeptic. I have the whole thought process of “see it to believe it”. But, I found that living life believing that there is nothing greater than us, that we serve no greater purpose than simply to attempt to survive and procreate, was very depressing. What was the point? If we’re going to become dust one day, without anything after, what is the point to even begin? And then, I settled upon the belief of the existence of God. I’m not saying that that’s the only reason I believe, but it’s one of the contributing factors.

Life, I believe, is supposed to be unfair. It isn’t unfair just because; it’s unfair because if it was fair, there would be no point in living in the first place. We start from nothing in life, and we will always take hits. It’s up to us to make ourselves happy, to try our best to survive until the last survivable thing. We have to earn happiness. With that said, it’s still pretty depressing to think that there is literally nothing after.

But I digress. To me, life is like a test. There will be easy problems, and then there will be hard problems. To pass this test, you need to survive to the best of your abilities and you need to find happiness. If you pass, then you will be awarded in the afterlife. If you fail or give up, you get punished. At worst, I’m just using religion as a delusional crutch. At best, I’ve come to terms with how unfair life is and I know how to pass this hypothetical test.