Why do Good Things Happen to Bad People?

You know the feeling, yes?

Someone who has done something terrible to you gets that promotion, or the book deal, or a winning lottery ticket in life.

You try not to stew in it, but it haunts you.

Why is life so unfair, right?

Why is it that you’re over here trying your hardest to be a good, kind person, to overcome the wounds inflicted upon you by this person or that person while maintaining a compassionate heart and operating within a strict moral code - but still you live in the shadows of the paycheck to paycheck world while the very person or people who trampled all over you with a smile on their face are out there living it up?

Why do we see people getting away with all the things they get away with and still being rewarded with public offices and tax dollars and speaking fees and carte blanche to break as many laws and moral codes as they see fit, while you get slammed with a high dollar ticket for rolling a stop sign and fines for daring to renovate your own home without asking the town for permission and paying those stupid permit fees?

It eats away at you.

I get it. This was among the hardest challenges I faced when I began rebuilding my own life.

It burned me to hear people commenting about how “sweet” and “courageous” one person is. This person looked me in the eye and told me it was my fault Lou was killed. This person traveled around our community and told people awful lies about me, resulting in me being blackballed from professional arenas. She straight up told me to my face how little she thought of me and how I was navigating my grief.

When I confronted her, she simply shrugged and explained that I was a convenient outlet for her anger. As if that made it all okay.

And yet she is to this day held in the highest regard in our community.

Another person stormed uninvited into my home during the first Christmas season I faed as a widow. She proceeded to threaten to “destroy me” for daring to mention an incident that happened between our children. My offense had been to listen to my very young son, and follow up on an innocent but still not-okay incident that had upset him. “I can buy and sell you,” she seethed. And “I don’t care that your husband is dead.”

This person rakes in a healthy income and enjoys every luxury money can buy. Her husband hasn’t worked in decades, instead taking care of all the domestic responsibilities. She dominates professionally and life is pretty much a constant party for her. And yet she took the time to crush me when she could. It was important to her to do so.

I could go on. My list is long, including the jurors who acquitted my husband’s killer, and everyone along the way who contributed to that outcome.

But even as I write this I can feel the very stirring of anger I worked so hard to heal.

Why poke that sleeping bear?

An incredible thing happened when I learned ow to stop focusing on other people’s lives and focus fully on my own: I became happier, healthier, and more successful.

It’s not my place to mete out justice in this world. And every moment of my own life that I dedicate to bitterness or self-righteousness is one less moment I am savoring as I live it.

I’ve learned that saying, “Let go and let God” actually works.

And I realize that in spite of my best intentions, I’ve made my own share of mistakes and I am also a villain in someone’s story out there.

Good things will always happen to bad people. People who “don’t deserve it.”

And bad things will always happen to good people.

It’s not a personal vendetta from God or the Universe. It’s not the world stacked against us.

It’s just life. The whole big, beautiful, awful, messy, glorious recipe of life isn’t always easy to taste. And that’s the whole point.