We are bombarded daily with news stories of people demanding "justice." Our courts are flooded with criminal and civil lawsuits--the participants seeking the justice they feel they deserve. This search for an ever-elusive "justice" is literally killing us.
I recently met with a woman whose twelve-year-old son was killed in a car accident. He was coming home late at night from a football game with her husband when a drunk driver crossed the road and hit their car head-on. Her son died immediately, and her husband was in the hospital for three weeks. Later they found out that the other driver had been charged five other times for drunk driving, and when he killed her son, he was driving without a license. This time he was charged with manslaughter, but because he was injured in the accident, the judge felt sorry for him and gave him a suspended sentence of 5-10 years.
She asked me, "How am I supposed to live with this? How do I sit here and live with the fact that this man is walking around free while my son is dead and will never walk anywhere again? Is that justice? I want to see this man punished for what he did."
Although I have an idea what a terrible loss this has been for her, no one could possibly know how much pain she has suffered because of this drunk driver's behavior. At this point her grief must seem overwhelming, and nothing I say will magically make it go away. I would not be so arrogant to presume that I could.
In addition to the pain of her loss, there is an awful sense of unfairness. She did nothing to bring any of this upon herself, and yet out of nowhere this man made choices that took her son out of this life and away from her.
Between her grieving and the sense of unfairness, she's in a lot of pain. Although I don't presume to try to make this pain disappear, because she asked me, I will offer some perspectives on this situation that are different from the ones she has now, and if she's willing to listen she will feel quite differently in a relatively short period of time. When we can see something differently, we can feel differently about it, and we can then behave differently toward it.
First, let's talk about fairness. Was it unfair that this drunk driver took her son from her? Yes . . . and No. It was unfair in that it was undeserved. She certainly didn't cause this to happen, but our sense of fairness is determined by our perspective. A young child thinks anything is unfair if it personally inconveniences him or her. Homework is unfair. Cleaning her room is unfair. But as parents we have a broader perspective, don't we? When a child complains about taking out the garbage--saying that it's unfair that he has to take out garbage of other people, garbage he didn't generate--he might actually have a small point to make, from one tiny perspective in a small moment in time. But we can see that in the larger and longer scheme of things, there is no injustice involved. We can see that the child must learn his role in the functioning of the family as a whole, and that he must also learn a sense of responsibility and of selflessness. So we might even smile when a child complains that such a task is unfair.
And so it is with the loss of her son. In this moment, from her perspective alone, it might seem unfair that he could be taken from her. But there are far greater principles involved, as well as perspectives that involve every human being on the planet. We live in a world--a universe--where we have the ability to make our own choices. We learn from those choices, and in the process we find genuine happiness. In the process of making choices, we inevitably make mistakes--mistakes that have negative effects on other people--and there is no other way we could possibly learn. The price we pay for living in a world where we can make our own choices, and learn and grow, is that we also have to live with the choices of others--including the foolish, stupid, and harmful ones.
This doesn't justify the behavior of the drunk driver. I only make the point that the greatest gift of this life is the ability to make our own choices, and the preservation of our ability to make those choices is the ultimate justice.
Now, this does not mean that when we make bad choices--like the drunk driver did--that we don't have to pay the price for them. We do, and we'll talk more about that in our next session.
Even though people have the right to make bad choices, that does not mean they don't have to pay the price for them. The drunk driver who killed her son, for example, had to face the judgment of a court. Now, it turns out that the judge--for reasons that baffle all of us--chose to give him a suspended sentence. Very peculiar in light of the fact that the drunk had been found guilty of drunk driving five previous times. Regardless of the sentence, however, the price was not your to administer. That was the jurisdiction of the court. The judge chose to let him walk free, and that is none of her business. Really.
It's none of this mother's business legally, and it makes no sense to make it her business. Now let me show you what I mean by that.
I know that her son's death has been a terrible loss to her, and I know she's having a hard time living with it. But imagine what would happen if I could magically grant her wish for justice? Imagine what it would be like if I were appointed by the courts to be an avenging angel at her disposal. For example, what if I took that drunk driver out behind her house and--while she watched--I beat him to death? Would that make her happy?
Oh, she might get a brief sense of ugly satisfaction from it, but it would not bring her son back, and she would not be genuinely happy. She'd only have a handful of a mean, shallow kind of justice, and that is not happiness. It's not even close. She'd still be alone. She'd still be angry. She would not have even a teaspoon of the kind of profound peace that genuinely happy people enjoy.
Anger is a poison. It's a cancer that's eating us up and destroying our happiness. If I killed that drunk driver for her, she might feel better for a moment, but it wouldn't last. Angry people use blaming and demands for justice like drug addicts use their favorite drug. The effect always wears off, and then they always need more.
So if justice and anger will never make us happy, what will? I'm sure this woman remembers how she felt when she held her son in her arms and told him she loved him? Isn't that the kind of happiness we want? We'll never find it in what we call "justice." No matter how severely we punish that drunk driver, we will never feel that kind of happiness from his punishment. If this mother really wants to be happy, she needs to spend her time around people who can love her, and prepare her to love other people. It's love that makes us happy, not justice.
I spent many years of my life insisting that other people treat me in a way that I called "fair." I was so foolish. In the process all I did was irritate them and make myself miserable. The people around us will always make mistakes. Mistakes are the unavoidable consequence of living in a world where we all get to make our own choices as we learn and grow. Some of those mistakes inevitably inconvenience and hurt other people, as that drunk driver's mistake hurt this woman's son.
When people make their mistakes, we have a choice to make. If we are wise, we will completely accept and ignore most of them. Our happiness is far too valuable to risk losing it as we stop to squabble about the mistakes of other people. Be very careful before you make the decision to spend your valuable time--before you literally spend a part of your life--on insisting that other people see their mistakes and pay for them.
On occasion, however--rare occasions--we do need to require people to be accountable for their irresponsible behavior, as in the case of a drunk driver. If we didn't do that, their behavior could continue and endanger the lives of more people. The punishment given to the man who killed your son may have been too light--we simply don't know whether it was enough to keep him from doing this again--but the responsibility for that decision belonged to the court, not to us.
Any time she now spends obsessing about the decision of the court--a decision that is none of her business--can only destroy her happiness, and that would be such a waste. It is now entirely her choice whether she is happy. If she continues to insist on justice, she might as well put a ring in her nose, attach a chain to it, and give it to the man who killed her son. If she stays angry about this, not only will the man have killed her son, she will be giving him the power to kill her. Does she really want to give him that power? Does she want to allow that man to take two lives instead of one?
If you're in a similar situation, give it up. Give up the anger that can result only in misery for you and the rest of your family. If you don't feel loved and happy, you're wasting your life, and you've only got one. Do you really want to throw your life away? Don't be satisfied with the shallow pursuit of justice, which will give you nothing. Instead, do this: Allow other people to love you, and learn to love them. As you do that, you'll lose the emptiness and anger you feel. Your life will become rich and full again, and that's what you really want.
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