Just about 10 years ago I began offering insights I received out of the blue in a weekly message I call Grasshopper Notes. The Grasshopper is the part of us that generates something that doesn’t come from our reservoir of pat answers. The following is one of the first unvarnished ideas that popped in that I wrote about.

“Fair is a Fairy Tale.”

Did you ever notice that Reality doesn’t ask your opinion before taking action? Reality does what it does and we have a reaction. We may be elated if Reality has us win the Grasshopper High Jump Sweepstakes or deflated if we have the losing ticket.

When we experience deflation, our reaction may be, “this isn’t fair.”

Fair is a judgement word. We begin judging reality and we have been conditioned to think that our critical dissertation will have an effect on the circumstances that have already happened. That’s as impractical as trying to get the water back into the hose once you’ve sprayed your car.

This is the type of Fun House Mirror Logic that we use anytime we buy into the concept of fair. Fair is a distortion. It doesn’t exist (except in baseball).

Fair is always an interpretation of reality and a knee-jerk reaction.

Responding to reality is always the answer. The difference between a reaction and a response is like the disparity between a da Vinci painting and a Velvet Elvis. A response will come from a calmer place where the emotion of the moment won’t rule the day.

When the Grasshopper spoke through the great teacher Jerry Stocking, he said, “A reaction is your first response to a stimulus.” Jerry invites you to explore the inexhaustible list of additional responses that are lined up behind your first response. Each time you take a moment to consider a response that isn’t so top of mind, like your first response, you go to a deeper place.

This practice has two additional benefits:

1.You interrupt your patterned way of doing things which may not be getting you the results you want.

2.You become the stimulus vs. being the response – the initiator vs. the reactor.

This way of responding will also dissolve our distorted concept of fair and leave it in Grimm’s book where it belongs. Fair enough?

All the best,

John