How do I know what's actually fair when systems seem rigged against me?

This is the question Sor Juana kept returning to—and she didn't have a clean answer either. Here's what matters: justice isn't something handed down that you either accept or don't. It's something you have to think through yourself, especially when the system treating you unfairly is the same one telling you what fair looks like. Start by noticing the specific moment when something felt wrong. Not the abstract principle, but the actual situation. Who benefited? Who paid the cost? Was that distribution deliberate or just how things fell? Sor Juana did this in her letters and defenses—she named exactly where the logic broke down, where power was hiding behind claims of neutrality. Then ask: whose definition of fairness am I using? The institution's? My own gut? What would fairness look like if it centered the person with the least power in this situation instead of protecting the status quo? You won't get perfect certainty. But you'll develop the kind of clarity Sor Juana modeled—the ability to see injustice without becoming paralyzed by it, and to act on a justice you've thought through yourself rather than inherited.