You do good things, and good things will happen to you. You do bad things and bad things will happen to you. This is the basic principle of karma. If you’re a believer in logic, you’d might figure this is bullshit, especially if you subscribe to chaos theory. I do subscribe to that theory, and I do call bullshit on karma, but I still believe in it. Well, sort of. I believe that if I lead a good life I’ll go to Heaven, and likewise if I lead a bad life I’ll rot in Hell. But my reward/punishment comes at the end of my life, not during. It’d be nice if people were kind to you if you’re kind to them, and I totally think this is the way the world should be. But life doesn’t always work that way.
Here’s the thing about karma: it works two ways. Now, I’m not talking about for you and against you; that’s obvious. What I mean is for you, or with you. These are not the same thing. Allow me to explain.
There once was a tv show called My Name Is Earl (great show), and there was a particular episode where Earl has to work at a fast food restaurant, and learns that the owner is a huge asshole, and wonders why karma isn’t smiting him off the face of the earth. Eventually he caves and kicks the guy’s ass, which leads to the guy losing his wife and going to jail and whatnot. So Earl now feels like he screwed up, doing something bad that he’ll have to add to his list (of bad things which he was to make up for). Then his brother Randy suggests that maybe he didn’t do something bad, and that karma just used him to finally even the score with the owner of the restaurant. This is what I’m talking about.
About a week ago I was doing something that could understandably be misconstrued as an unpleasant thing, and a friend went out of their way to misconstrue the hell out of it. They went on to cite karma and even tried to lecture me about it. So I bitch slapped her with this little nugget of knowledge. I told her the person who would most suffer for my crimes totally deserved what she was getting anyway – to which my friend agreed – and that maybe this was simply karma giving a little payback.
So that’s what I mean about karma working two ways. For every action you take, you now have to consider what side of karma you’re on. When you do something nice for someone, is it because you’re being good, and gaining good karma? Or is it karma using you to reward someone else for their good deeds? And if you do something bad – same thing. Bad for you or bad for someone else? Could it be both? With the good I can see this; you gaining good karma while rewarding someone else. But what about the bad? If karma uses you to punish someone else, does karma also put a strike against you now? Does that seem fair? And then something bad has to happen to you now to balance that out – but will someone else then get punished for punishing you? That’s not balance – it’s a vicious, never-ending cycle.
What if when being used by karma your bad deed ends up affecting several other people? Does that mean you’re now in deep shit with karma? That’s a swirling vortex of entropy right there. And how do the repercussions stack up? Can you get a lot of karma off your back if something really terrible happens to you rather than a motley assortment of tiny annoyances? Is there a points system? If you do one really good deed does that make up for a few bad ones?
At some point, if you rationalize it all out, it all becomes meaningless. Are you working for yourself, or for karma? Are you doing good or bad? Without being able to tell for sure, what difference does it make in the long run? If you don’t even know, then why worry about the consequences? Now I’m not saying to get out there and do whatever the hell you feel like. All I’m saying is not to worry about some mystical force governing your actions. You’re in control of everything you do; you and you alone are responsible for your own actions.
So do good when you should, and be bad when you can get away with it. And the next time someone tells you that whatever you’re doing might come back to haunt you, remind them that maybe you’re the one doing the haunting.
The Chris Effect 