The Question That Refuses To Die
I was sitting in my silverblue Toyota the other day, engine idling, rain tapping the windshield in that slow, distracted way it does when the sky can’t make up its mind.
And out of nowhere an old question drifted in.
One of those questions that has been following people around since we first started telling stories around fires.
If I’m trying to do things right, why do things still go wrong?
Why does the liar get promoted and not me?
Why does the opportunist always land on his feet?
Why does the person who cuts corners end up with the corner office?
You don’t need a philosophy degree to wonder about this.
You just need a few years of watching the world behave like it never signed the social contract.
I’m not a theologian.
Not an ethicist.
I’m just a social worker without a hobby.
But that question shows up for everyone eventually, and when it does, it doesn’t bother to knock.
The old religious explanation is familiar:
Don’t worry, God will sort it out.
Justice will come later.
Surely, the wicked will pay their tab in the next world.
There’s a comfort in that.
A gentle one.
But it always felt a bit like treating goodness as a retirement plan:
Be decent now, cash out later.
Maybe that’s true.
Maybe not.
Then the Stoics wandered into my life, or I wandered into theirs.
They look at the whole issue, take a slow breath, and basically say: you’re asking the wrong question.
They don’t argue that the wicked will suffer later.
They argue the wicked suffer right in front of you, here and now.
Not from flames or punishment but from the consequences of their own choices.
Whoever rises through greed ends up chained to it.
Whoever schemes their way forward becomes caught in their own web.
Whoever worships money eventually serves it.
Some advance through charm and beauty rather than force and cunning, but the trap is the same. What looks like fulfillment from the outside often feels like emptiness on the inside.
Meanwhile the decent person walks around looking unrewarded, but carries something the other can’t reach.
A kind of inner consistency.
A bit of peace.
A freedom that doesn’t rise or fall with the dow jones.
The Stoics ask a question that feels almost rude in its simplicity:
Are you sure that more money would fix you?
Or would it just reshape the same problems you have into a more extravagant version?
Sit with that long enough and something unknots itself:
Maybe goodness doesn’t pay in the currency everyone else is chasing.
Maybe it pays in something quieter.
Something the marketplace can’t count or sell.
We live in a culture that treats money as the only real measurement.
If it doesn’t hold cash value, it doesn’t matter.
Character is decorative.
Depth is optional.
Integrity is a relic from the past.
We measure what fits on a spreadsheet and ignore what doesn’t.
So the decent man looks unrewarded only because the age is too materialistic to notice what he actually possesses.
In a different time and place, he would be admired.
In ours, he’s not even a footnote.
I watched the rain slip down the glass and thought about the men and women I’ve met who had everything except peace.
Wealthy, successful, and ever restless.
And then I thought about the quiet ones.
The people who never made a fortune but managed something harder:
A life they didn’t have to apologize to themselves for.
Maybe that’s the real reward.
Not applause.
Not status.
Just being able to live with yourself.
Listen to me:
The world isn’t fair. It isn’t even punctual.
It doesn’t hand out prizes for behaving well.
But maybe fairness was never the point.
Maybe the point is to stay human in a world that rewards the opposite.
Goodness might not be a great investment plan. But it might be a silent declaration.
A refusal to trade your soul for a payout.
And sitting there with the rain tapping and the engine humming, the whole thing suddenly felt clear:
The person who lives for prizes ends up chained to them.
The other person doesn’t feel like anything is missing.