“Life is not fair” is not a Jewish concept.
It’s one of many mistaken ideas that has crept into our minds from the society we live in, but it;s not true. As G-d fearing Torah observant Jews we know it’s wrong.
Every bit of pleasure and every bit of pain that we experience is measured with an exactness that we can’t imagine. When pain or suffering comes our way through the actions of other people then they may be acting inappropriately, they may be sinning, they may be evil, but our pain was meant to be.
That is the meaning of, “HaTzur tamim pa’alo.”
While we can understand this, like AvramMD said, easy to write, much harder to actually internalize and accept. Moshe Rabbeinu himself asked “zu Torah v’zu s’chara?” when he was shown the horrible death of Rabbi Akiva.
We all have moments of intense pain, and only an idiot will minimize his friend’s suffering by telling him, “well, this is how it’s meant to be, don’t worry, be happy.”
I’m just saying that when things are going relatively well in our lives and we have a moment to sit and think, we need to cross out “life is not fair” in our minds and replace it with “life is beautiful.”
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