Son, when you were young you always used the word fair to mean "what I want", as in "That's not fair". As you grow up you are beginning to understand what it really means about equitable distribution of benefit. After that you have one more thing to learn: the world isn't fair.

If the world was fair, then your good honest hardworking intelligent relatives in the Philippines would stand the same chance as you do of happiness.

If the world was fair then hideous things would happen to bad people, and good luck would come to those who need it most.

Or perhaps I'm wrong about that last one: it rains on the just and the unjust, so some might argue that is fair. But I don't think so. I don't think it is fair for someone to do everything right in their life and then have their child die or their house burn down.

When you reach teenage you begin to understand the reral compexities and implications of the world. You begin to see the inequities and you think you understand that the world isn't fair. But many teenagers (and adults) want to fix the inequity: they want to make the world fair. They haven't learnt yet that it JUST ISN'T.

If you go down the path of trying to fix the world you will fling yourself against the walls of injustice until you are bloody and broken, and you will make no more mark on those walls than a stain of your own failure.

Don't do it. Don't rail against the wind, don't piss in the ocean, don't push against the tide. Don't ruin your own life trying to fix the lives of eight billion others.

Live a good life. Do the right thing for those around you. Help strangers when you can. But don't break yourself and ruin the lives of your family doing it. As fast as you help one person, a thousand more will be plunged into unfair misery.