Was I a dictator in a previous life?

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Dear Hera,

My car got attacked for the third time in two years!

First, it was my little old Toyota Caldina, stolen from work for a joyride by a group of teenagers. Then, a few weeks later, the number plates from the replacement car generously given to me by my Good Samaritan friend were nicked. I mean, they were 666-something, but still – surely that’s no excuse, aye?

And now, on a crisp late-August morning, I woke up to the sight of my Honda Vezel’s side window smashed in.

In two out of these three incidents, my sunglasses were taken, too. Expensive prescription sunglasses, no less – although “expensive” is perhaps stretching it, given that they came from one of those two-for-the-price-of-one deals at Specsavers. Still, they’re prescription – no one else can wear them unless they happen to have exactly the same eyesight predicament as me. So what was the plan here?

The police, predictably, regret to inform me that they won’t be investigating any further.

And I suppose that’s where the frustration currently boiling inside me comes from. I now have to organise the replacement window, pay the insurance excess and start considering whether I need more expensive insurance next time. And all for what? Because somebody wanted to have some fun?

Look, I know that, considering everything happening in the world, my under-$2,000 grievance might sound pathetic. But it’s not really about the money. It’s about the existential injustice of it all.

I haven’t done anything wrong. I work hard, live a decent life and try to help other people. Yet someone can decide, completely arbitrarily, to damage my property, make my life worse and cost me money – and simply get away with it. Meanwhile, I have to helplessly pay the bill, clean up the glass and move on.

I know justice is a social construct. I know life is inherently unfair. The universe is cold and soulless, and Putin is still alive and well. But it still hurts, you know? It stings, rather like every little shard of glass I had to pick up from the floor of my car.

So, Hera: where and how do I find consolation when life keeps randomly throwing bricks at me?

Kind regards, 

Sisyphus 

Dear Sisyphus,

I’m very sorry to hear about your window! Maybe your car is haunted, and ran over someone in a previous life. 

I’m not intending to victim-blame, but seeing as you appear to be living in a suburban DLC of Grand Theft Auto, I’d recommend no longer leaving your sunglasses or any other stuff in the car. It might even pay to leave the glove box open and get a wheel lock. It won’t solve the existential unfairness of the universe, but it might stop you having to constantly replace your sunglasses. Or you could do what the nana (or the person purporting to be a nana) on my street does, and write “stop breaking into my car, I am just a poor nana”, accompanied by a drawing of a teddy bear, on an old spring roll box, taped to the window. I don’t know if this strategy worked for her, but it could be worth a try.

If it makes you feel any better, I doubt the person who stole your glasses was, mid-burglary, in the analytical frame of mind required to investigate whether or not your sunglasses were prescription, and if so, what that meant for the resale value. Nor can we assume they were robbing your car for fun. It’s a lot more likely they were robbing your car for some depressing personal reason. That doesn’t mean you have to feel sorry for them, but if you’re going to mentally torment yourself with imaginary scenarios, you might as well stop short of imagining a master burglar, gleefully rubbing their hands together. 

How do you come to terms with the existential unfairness of the universe is a question I am not qualified to answer. I never made it through the ontological argument. It is tempting, of course, to say that life is unfair. But honestly, I don’t know what life is. Maybe there is some kind of meticulous moral accounting system beyond our comprehension. Maybe we are just feral dogs, gorging ourselves on atoms in a godless infinity. Maybe we are all infinitely bifurcated manifestations of the same foundational consciousness, and upon death, we dissolve into the timeless simultaneity, rejoining the great ocean of all minds past and present, in which the concept of forgiveness is rendered irrelevant by a spontaneous, perfect and complete understanding. 

Whatever life is, it’s definitely insane. We live in a world in which you can hand-feed wallabies! Lose both arms in a combine harvester accident! Eat a steak the size of a toilet seat, in a restaurant named after Kandinsky. We have been thrown, unwittingly, into the mystery and chaos of the world, and are too close to the source to see it clearly. Even trying to keep in mind the conceptual impossibility of our own lives and not getting bogged down in calories and rates bills is a near-impossible task. 

So what should you do when bad things happen? You should let yourself be royally pissed off, have a stiff drink/play God of War for six hours, and then try to move on without too much maudlin speculation on the machinations of the universe, if only because festering on an admittedly infuriating but ultimately low-stakes inconvenience, and turning it into a hostile existential narrative, rather than the tedious inevitability of owning a vehicle in an urban centre, is only going to prolong your misery, when you could, as previously mentioned, be hand-feeding a wallaby. 

There are problems you can fix, and problems you can’t, and unless the unfixable problems are life-ruining, it’s better to grudgingly accept these accidents of fate as the natural balance of your abundance of unexamined good luck, like living in a time where table salt is abundant, and people rarely get polio. It sounds a little backwards, but sometimes the best corrective for a bad experience is to intentionally go out and do something kind for someone else, either as a way of balancing the existential scales, or simply as a reminder to yourself that good people exist, and sometimes good things happen for no reason. 

I’m not trying to be a Pollyanna. Having your car broken into sucks, and you’re completely entitled to be pissed off. You clearly have a good sense of humour about it, which is something!

But I don’t agree with your assertion that the universe is cold and soulless. 

In the words of Norm McDonald: