The most important sentence in any article is the first one, we are taught by William Zinsser. The most important rule, again, is the first rule of any kind. Consider the book 50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School . My favorite among the fifty life lessons given by Charles J. Sykes is the Rule 1: Life is not fair.

The average teenager, I was told, uses the phrase "It's not fair" 8.6 times a day. Somewhere behind these complaints about unfairness is an implicit wish that life would be much happier if it is fair. Is it?

Sure, life seems unfair. But so do lots of things. Unsightly mole and acne on our face, or receding hairline, for instance, seems very unfair. A quick fix, you might have thought, is to ask for a better control of the unfairness of the world. The obsession with our request to make this world a bit more fair simply ends up with a burgeoning number of rules, say, in the design of doctor duty roster, the compensation rules from the High Court and Court of Appeal judgments – you name it.

If we could calculate an unfair awareness index, it would be marching toward an all-time high. The mere thought of the spectacular increase in the rules for generating doctor duty roster provoked a shot of pain behind my jaws.

My brow furrowed and the crow's feet deepened as I struggled to remind myself that what we can control is the way we react – but not making this world any fairer.