Why do bad things happen to good people?

 

When I was a child, I often wondered why bad things seem to happen to people who are good. Over the years, I have been fortunate to meet many genuinely kind and decent individuals. And yet, unfortunately, I have also seen how fate has been unkind to some of them.

It is never easy to accept that someone who helps others, builds healthy families or work environments, and contributes positively to the community has to go through tragedy or deep loss. It feels unfair. Almost contradictory.

From my experience, this question can be looked at from three different perspectives.

First, it may simply be a matter of human perception. In reality, difficult events do not “choose” good or bad people. They just happen. Being a good person does not guarantee a life free of problems, just as being a bad person does not automatically attract only suffering.

Second, I have noticed that some good people are sometimes too good for their own good. They trust too easily, accept what others say without questioning, open their doors assuming everyone thinks and feels the same way, or step into risky situations relying only on prayer, without enough awareness or protection. This does not explain everything, of course, but it does offer part of the answer.

Third, there is the law of karma. What happens to us is not limited to this single lifetime. Someone may have created many positive karmic accounts in this life, but what about previous ones? Karma moves across births. A good present life does not necessarily mean the past was the same. In that sense, today’s goodness may be planting the seeds for a brighter future - even if challenges still appear now.

There is one important point to be added: altruism and selflessness. I have lived in community for almost forty years, and the spirit of service has deeply shaped my life. The inner feeling it creates is powerful and difficult to describe. Yet I am also aware that serving others does not guarantee that problems will never come.

In the spiritual classes I read daily, there is a beautiful idea: we should feel free from obstacles, knowing that obstacles will still come. This means that when service is truly altruistic, there is an inner sense of protection - like finding shelter during a hurricane. The storm may continue outside, but inside there is stability.

And if we look at history, with a few exceptions, many good people who went through difficult times eventually ended up well - at least in their hearts. This is visible in their legacy, their influence and even in the lives of those who came after them.

In other words, bad things may happen to good people, but at least their qualities become their shelter in the worst moments.

Healing the self by recovering balance

 

In the previous post, we explored the idea of a “negative balance” - the way body, mind and soul try to compensate when life goes out of alignment. Even though the system keeps working, it often does so at a cost: pain, stress, emptiness or disconnection. A “negative balance” allows us to function, but not in harmony. So, the natural question arises: how do we move from compensation to true balance?

 

How do we fix this? How do we move toward a real balance?

Real balance is not achieved by fixing only one area of life. It is not just a question of changing our diet, starting to meditate or resting more.

Balance is a dynamic relationship between opposites:

·                 Pragmatism and spirituality.

·                 Action and reflection.

·                 Body and soul.

·                 Money and disinterest.

·                 Nature and civilization.

·                 Leisure and inner silence.

·                 And many more…

When one side dominates, the other tries to compensate. And this is why a negative balance appears, disguised as stability or a “normal life”.

It is important to remember something simple and powerful: balance is not something we achieve once and forever. It is a cycle in which we get it, we lose it and we rebuild it again… and possibly, we will lose it and rebuild…

Think of walking: one foot leaves the floor and goes higher than the other - at that moment, there is disbalance; then, that foot reaches the floor, slightly ahead the other one, not because of a competition between feet, but to regain balance. And there it is, the other foot, ready to rise up… Each time we walk, we have learnt a bit more until we master it.

Each cycle teaches us something deeper about ourselves in terms of our limits, our attitude, our priorities, our awareness…

For me it is helpful to check myself, through questions. For instance, in relation to my work, I could ask: “Am I productive?” But I ask instead: “Can I keep doing this for a long term?” “How healthy is this work?” “Is this aligned with who I really am, with my purpose and vision?”

Living in balance does not mean avoiding effort, challenges or discomfort; it means choosing harmony instead of constant compensation, becoming aware when we are forcing ourselves to adapt to unhealthy rhythms.

Instead of falling into the easy and “natural” negative balance, we must pause and ask ourselves: “In which part of the cycle am I right now?” “Am I rebuilding, compensating, avoiding or healing?” “Am I really balanced?”

And maybe the most important question is:

What kind of balance am I living today - a healthy one, a negative one that I have learned to normalize, or am I healing and rebalancing myself?

When we experience balance, but it is negative

 

I have lost my balance so many times that I lost count.

In terms of health, I still remember living for years with a deep headache. It was not occasional. It was not “from time to time”. It was all the time. For years.

Balance is part of our nature. So much so that when we lose it, we try - consciously or unconsciously - to create another form of balance, sometimes an unhealthy one. It is what I call a negative balance: an adjustment that keeps us functioning, but at a cost.

Later, a doctor helped me understand what was happening. My body was compensating for an internal imbalance. It had created its own “solution”, one which was painful. That moment brought a deep realization: in human life, balance is not always immediate. When we lose it, we may take years to rebuild it. This is why, the negative balance comes in, as a way to compensate, until - and if - we recover the normal positive powerful balance we lost.

But, beyond myself, when I look around today, I feel many people are living in this same kind of negative balance, lives increasingly out of sync with natural rhythms, body, mind and soul.

Let’s look at how this works more closely:

• The body. We move less. We eat food that nourishes less. And then sickness appears - not as punishment, but as a messenger, a signal that something is out of alignment. The body is constantly trying to bring us back to equilibrium. When we ignore those signals, the compensation becomes heavier, more painful and more persistent.
• The mind. Overthinking, anxiety, endless worries... These are no longer exceptions - they are becoming the norm. The mind tries to compensate for inner emptiness or lack of direction by producing constant activity. Thoughts replace silence and noise replaces clarity. For a moment, this gives the illusion of control or purpose. But deep inside, it only creates more exhaustion. Another form of negative balance.
• The soul. In the past, people practiced their religion. Then many only spoke about it. Now, for many, even truth itself has become blurred. The soul needs silence, meaning, connection and that inner fire from those times. Without nourishment, the soul looks for substitutes: constant distraction, external validation and an endless consumption of information.

A negative balance makes the system to work, but not in harmony. How to fix that? A topic for the next post…

To let go of control, self-control is the solution

Control feels like safety. When you are in control of your job, your family, your life or anything really, it is like you can do whatever you want.

So, letting go of control sounds almost irresponsible as it gives structure, predictability and the comforting illusion that, if we manage everything carefully enough, nothing will fall apart. And yet, life has a subtle way of reminding us that control, when taken too far, becomes tension.

Much of the pressure does not come from what happens, but from the constant effort to make things happen our way: to control outcomes, people, timing, emotions - even ourselves. This kind of control narrows our perception of life and it demands constant vigilance, leaving little room for luck or fate.

Letting go of control does not mean giving up. It does not mean passivity, indifference or lack of responsibility. It means recognizing the limits of external control and shifting attention inward.

This is the point when self-control quietly enters as the real solution.

Self-control is not about suppression or rigidity as many would think. It is the ability to choose a response instead of reacting automatically. It is the strength to pause, to observe what is happening inside and to act from clarity rather than impulse. When self-control is present, there is no need to control others or circumstances.

Ironically, the more self-control grows, the less external control is required and that takes us to a situation in which emotions are acknowledged before being unleashed, saving many relationships in the process. Self-control helps us to face situations without the hunger to dominate them.

Letting go of control, then, is not a loss of power, but its refinement. Power moves from the outside to the inside, from force to awareness, from fear to steadiness, from shouting to a deep resilience.

Next time you feel being in control is making you stressed, just go deeply within, meditate, contemplate or just reflect for a few moments. Feel the control you have on yourself. Let go of the control in the world.

And then, act.