The Lost Sheep

A freshman posted a blog in which she ranted about her complaints of her current curriculum. In particular, she was very upset that she paid much more effort in her first year writing classes than some of her peers did. However, she might not be awarded with a grade that she expected simply because "the system is not fair".

This reminded me of a common phenomenon about why good people are sometimes not recognized for their contribution. In addition, they even receive blames or criticism because of the imperfections in their work. On the other hand, people who do not a damn thing can safely skirt all those blames.

So there is this story of why God does not award good people in Chinese.The gist of the story is that the greatest prize from God to good people is to let them become good people. I could not find any English version of the story, which led me to doubt its authenticity. Instead I came across the Parable of the Lost Sheep, which sort of relates to the same phenomenon that the missing sheep (the bad people) receives more attention from the shepherd than the behaving sheep (the good people). Again, there is also a Chinese saying that the baby (between two twins) who cries louder gets more breast milk from the mother. So these stories/sayings all describe a normal  behavior/social psychology in the human society. I don't think it is fair for the good people/quiet baby, but it seems to that men are simply not able to evaluate or appreciate people around them given their ability to discern active (a sheep is missing/a baby is crying) and non-active (a sheep is following the rules/a baby is not crying even though it might not be fully fed) information. Did I just write some crap?

To sum up, I think these are the limitations of humanity that we cannot get rid of as long as we are emotional creatures. So even though I do not wholeheartedly buy the argument that God awards the good people of their good character, I nevertheless think that this is the best way of dealing with it. By no means I am saying that I am a good person. I am just able to resolve a similar issue in the past month in which I did not receive many credits of my contribution whereas I became the first person to blame for a mistake. Oh well let it be. It is nowhere near the worst.