Some people were meant to have soft, gentle lives. I was not one of them. Sometimes through choices of my own, and sometimes because of the things life has thrown at me, I’ve had to navigate a fair amount of “not fair” and “this sucks.”

As a kid, I would often hear the phrase “life’s not fair” from my parents when one of us complained over some perceived slight. No matter if the slight was real or not, the phrase “life’s not fair” is ingrained in me at this point.

I’ve said variations of this myself as a parent; the problem with it is that it doesn’t leave space for conversation. It’s a punctuation mark that means stop complaining. In the 70’s – 90’s there wasn’t a whole lot of back talk allowed, or room for discussion. It was a “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about mentality.” Gen X learned by doing. We didn’t have YouTube or Google; it was trial and error. We didn’t have therapists, and our lives were generally not “soft” in the sense that we were coddled in any way, shape, or form.

I’ve made some not-so-awesome decisions as an adult and also as a parent. My kids are quick to point out the error of my ways. Some of my decisions have meant they don’t have soft lives either. They wade through their own trauma and disappointments. Thankfully this day in age, we have many resources at our fingertips to enable growth and healing, when life is unapologetically not fair at times. And when life gives us anything but soft. We have books and podcasts, reels and music that touch our souls. What we don’t often have is quiet. The barrage of information flooding our brains from dawn to dusk and beyond is more than we were wired for. There is no space for quiet and reflection. Those times, more than ever, need to be carved out intentionally.

I am not good at carving out time. It is very easy to fall into the doom scroll zone, and disappear for a while from a harder life than I would like. And let me be clear, not all hards are equal. My hard, may seem easy to you. Your hard, may be unimaginable to me. All fruit in the basket is not the same. I’ve had conversations with people who feel they don’t have the “right” to complain, but it’s all relative. Everyone has difficult times, and they aren’t to be compared. Similarly, comparing your life to a life that appears on the outside to be “soft” may not be true, as we never know what is happening behind closed doors and inside one’s heart and mind.

My spiritual journey has been fraught with twists and turns every which way, but one thing I do hold true is that someday, my soft life is coming and not in a karmic way, but in a way that holds fast to my soul, one of grace and peace.