Our condo association wants an adjacent association to share expenses for a fence dividing our properties by splitting the costs half-and-half. That’s fair, right? Maybe not. The other association has four homeowners, and ours has 28. So it proposed we divide the cost into 32 parts, with our group paying 28 of those parts and theirs paying four.

While their proposal may be a ploy to pay less, it’s also a reasonable alternative view. Being your standard sort of waffly progressive, I immediately thought of several more factors to consider, such as total land area, the average unit size, which way the “nice” side of the fence faces, who engages and supervises the contractor, and who benefits most.

I once subbed for a middle school English class in which I had to give a vocabulary test. Students had been given the list of words and definitions the night before, with the option to copy it verbatim in handwriting instead of taking the test. There were students who chose to copy, student who chose to study, and one student who had not done the copying and insisted that it was Not Fair! that he have to take the test.

That situation seemed straightforwardly fair to me. Unfortunately, determining fairness is more often nuanced, and like the case of repairing the fence, often has a monetary component.

If my family takes driving vacations in order to save for college while another spends their excess income traveling the globe, should their child get more financial aid than mine? If someone goes on a long hike with insufficient supplies and gets injured or lost, should local residents pay for the rescue? If someone without health insurance rides a bicycle without using a helmet and gets a head injury, should the rest of us share the cost?

The answer is Yes, partly because the alternatives have consequences. The unprepared person in each case either suffers additional long-term debt, fear and discomfort followed by public opprobrium, or an unhealthful hospital stay possibly followed by long-term disability. The person didn’t “get away with” anything.

But mostly the answer is Yes because no one is perfect. If you haven’t experienced a negative consequence based on your own carelessness or lack of foresight, a Wow, that was stupid moment, then you are either very young, completely lacking introspection, or a narcissist.

I feel like I have these moments almost every day now. My friends and family are very supportive. The hardest part is forgiving myself.