A Stomach Bug on Eid and The Fallacy of Fairness

Reframing unhelpful thinking patterns around what's fair and 'why me?'

“I don’t feel so good,” I told my husband a little before isha, soon after breaking the last Ramadan fast. I think I could tell what was coming from the squeamishness in my stomach; what followed was very little sleep, a bedside bucket and, by the end, bile.

This wasn’t how Eid was supposed to be. I had plans on Eid! I hadn’t prepared far enough in advance to coordinate family outfits, but my plans involved food—I would be making sheer khurma—and company: seeing friends for brunch and having my sister, who had flown in from out of town, over to my home in the afternoon. There wouldn’t be time for an Eid nap, and the kids would be cranky, but without iftar and taraweeh, we’d all go to bed early to make up for the busy day.

That was the Eid in my head. Instead, my husband wrestled both toddlers into sort-of-mismatched Eid clothes and got them into their carseats while I lay on the couch, zoning in and out from the fatigue of vomiting all night and the sedating Phenergan I had taken to curb the nausea.

It took me back to my pregnancy two years ago in which I was down ten pounds from debilitating nausea and lack of appetite. “Hyperemesis gravidarum” was the diagnosis; my OB tried to get me on a Zofran pump, except that it would cost more than a mortgage. We settled for in-office IV fluids. I would eat Choco Chimps once or twice a day for a few days, and then a meal. This went on for a couple months.

“Why me?” I had asked in the thick of HG, when so many more women seemed to have easier pregnancies. Why did mine have to be like this? Yet I was one of the lucky ones: my HG improved after about twenty weeks; some women have intractable nausea and vomiting until the day they deliver.

A similar thought crossed my mind after I woke up on the couch while my family was at Eid prayer and saw all the pictures of my kids, without me with them: “Why did I have to get sick right before Eid?”

It feels like a silly question to ask about a 24-hour stomach bug in a comfortable home with medication on hand, when other families have members permanently lost under rubble and no access to basic needs. But still, I asked it.

The Fallacy of Fairness

When someone asks the question “Why me?” in response to an event that’s happening to them, the corollary is this: “I don’t deserve for this to be happening to me.”

The belief system behind this question is a cognitive distortion called “the fallacy of fairness”, a thinking pattern that the world is inherently fair and just, and that people deserve what they get: good people deserve good things, bad people deserve bad things.

Some examples of this distortion might be:

• “My co-worker is a jerk, I don’t get why she got a promotion and I didn’t.”

• “I helped my brother with x, so he owes me y.”

• “I’m a good person, I deserve to find a great guy/great girl; why am I still single?”

• “I didn’t deserve to get divorced/lose my job/get cancer.”

However, the concept of fairness when confined to this realm—that people’s input warrants a just output—is fundamentally flawed. This world is inherently unfair, inherently unjust. And despite our best efforts, much of the time the outcome is not based on our efforts alone.

The Darker Side of the Fallacy

Lurking underneath the indignation at perceived unfairness can also be a baser instinct if one allows themselves to acknowledge it: jealousy that someone has something that we don’t have, especially when we feel that we are more deserving of it.

Additionally, the thought pattern ‘I deserve something good because I am inherently good’ has a darker inverse: ‘You must have deserved that bad something.’

This idea appeals to our sense of justice and order which we use to make sense of the world: that people get what they deserve. But in an inherently unjust world, we may try to assimilate situations to fit into this simplistic schema about fairness; for example, when something befalls an individual you know, your instinct may be to blame, to ask “Well why did they” or “If only they hadn’t” or “I wonder what they did that caused such-and-such to happen to them.”

On a systemic scale, many people who continue to justify the genocide in Palestine—whether overtly or subconsciously—do so through this flawed thought about justice: that if the Palestinians are being genocided, it must be that they deserve it because they are collectively evil, violent, or less human.

How To Reframe the Fallacy of Fairness

When your mind goes to “Why Me?” or “I don’t deserve this” in response to a difficulty you are facing, here are some ways to reframe it:

1. “Why Not Me?”: Instead of “Why me?”, try rephrasing the question to “Why not me? Is there a reason I personally should be exempt from this trial?” This both helps you de-center false notions of your own exceptionalism and de-personalize the event: it isn’t necessarily happening because of you; it is happening because this is the nature of the world, and if it were not happening to you, it may be to someone else. It likely is to someone else at the same time. And if this were not happening to you, perhaps something else would be.

2. Ask for what you want, for others: when you see that someone else has what you wish for yourself, make a prayer for them to receive more. This is a balm against jealousy and an exercise in common humanity. Ask for good even for those you don’t like. By doing this, you start to uncouple in your mind that good things should only happen to people you deem to be “good”.

3. Separate efforts from outcome: remember that you can control only what’s yours to control, and that the outcome is a culmination of your efforts in addition to many other inputs that are out of your hands. Even if you did everything in your power, the world does not operate based on your input alone.

And for a Muslim, there are a couple spiritual reframes to keep in mind:

1. This world is not the end all be all for justice. Personally, I’ve maintained that because I believe in justice, I believe in an afterlife. This world does not have full justice. For some, that might drive one away from faith through the question, “Why does God allow suffering?” For me, it drives me toward faith, because I see what human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another, and I know complete justice can never be found with them, only with God.

2. Abundance can be just as much a trial as a blessing. In the prosperity gospel version of religion, good health and abundant wealth = blessing, while illness and loss of wealth = punishment. This is a distortion, and one that has become more commonplace in wealthier societies: to be given more must mean God’s favor is upon you.

   If abundance makes one greedy, distracted, desiring worldly gain, or if one does not use that abundance to benefit others, is it really a blessing? In a hadith reported by Amr ibn Awf, the Prophet (S) said: “By Allah, it is not poverty that I fear for you, but rather I fear you will be given the wealth of the world, just as it was given to those before you. You will compete for it just as they competed for it, and it will ruin you just as it ruined them.”

In our tradition, tribulation is made clear:

“And We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient,
Who, when disaster strikes them, say, ‘Indeed we belong to God, and indeed to Him we will return.’ Those are the ones upon whom are blessings from their Lord and mercy. And it is those who are the [rightly] guided.”
(2:155-157)

As for me, I don’t know why my pregnancies are the pits, and it’s about as fun as it sounds that last Eid al-Adha my son had hand foot mouth disease and this year Eid al-Fitr found me tossing cookies instead of eating them. I would, of course, like a “normal” Eid. But I also realize that normal is a myth and that outside of my bubble exists a much wider disparity between two Muslims’ Eids. And so all I can say is, alhamdulillah for the things that are difficult and the things that are easy, for any and all the things that I don’t know are good for me. May even these minor trials be a means of expiation.