On Karma

As a 20-something year old, I often times feel like the 6 month old child that just learns that hitting your head with a spoon HURTS. You know the seen. The baby is bouncing in the chair happy about who knows what, when inevitably the kid hits his head with the spoon, and then what happens? Tears come streaming forth. With lound cries for good measure.

To those older than the infant, its patently obvious that hitting yourself hard with a solid object hurts, but how the hell is the baby supposed to know? That's how I feel about the lesson on karma I've learned recently. Older, more wise, folk know what I'm about the lessons I've learned. But how the hell else was I supposed to know?

Over the past few weeks I've been lamenting about how crappy things have been happening TO me. To me, is important b/c I don't think I had a direct hand in anything that happened recently, they just happened.

The first thing that runs through my mind when shitty things happen is, "why ME??? what did I do??" The answer dawned on me today. Case in point (if you read the other post about the dentist thing, you might want to skip this part)-

When I was in NY my tooth chipped. I have no idea why, i was just biting my thumb/biting my nail, then bam, chipped. Its not a huge chip, hardly noticable - especially given everyone's self absorption. People are too self absorbed to pay that much attention to you. Regardless, I spazzed. It happened on a weekend so when Monday came, I called every dentist possible to schedule an appointment given the type of insurance I had. Before I went on break I enrolled in this "Discount savings plan" for dentistry coverage. The advertisement came through my school website so I figured, better that than nothing.

The plan has a website so I went on in and looked up doctors around the area and found one, made an appointment and vuala! I got to the office and the dentist was over-eager to get to work on my mouth. After she heard that I hadn't been at the dentist in for like ever, she was even happier. "We're going to give you x-rays, clean your teeth, blah blah blah." I told her to slow down. Given that I had a discount plan and not insurance, I only had funds to fix the tooth that chipped. She called in her receptionist who said that she had called the number that I gave her that was on the card and they said they covered pretty much everything and 80% of cosmetic stuff. I was weary but since I had never called the number, I thought the receptionist would know better than I.

For teeth cleaning, x-rays, and bonding my chipped tooth, I was charged $22. What a deal! I thought.. When I got home I realized that the bonding might have been crappy work. When I got back to California I got a call from the receptionist saying that the insurance company said that the claim for the work was improperly filed and that they might have to send me the bill. I thought, "HA! There is no way in hell I'm paying that bill. Especially if the work done wasn't that great." Guess what happened. A week later, the bonding that the dentist put on chipped right off! It was as if karma said, you don't want to pay? Ok. Say goodbye to the work.

Easy come easy go.

Now I'm starting to realize what my mom said once about karma being blind to certain things. She mentioned that karma only knows when you do harm. For example - a government official put on deportation duty. This officer might find a case given to him where a man, who is applying for citizenship. After investigating the man's background, the officer may find that the man has been arrested in the past for gang activities. Under the immigration law, the man is eligible for deportation. The officer decides to use this law to justify deporting the man. All of a sudden tragedy strikes the officer's family.

My mother would argue that the officer will have shitty things happen to them because of the action of deporting the man, even if the man was involved in illegal activities. Why? Because that man also had a grandmother who depended on the money he sent to her as her sole income. Now that the man is deported, the grandmother has no source of income and is left destitute. As my mom tried to explain to me, "all karma knows is that the officer caused great harm to a family. Yes the law says that the man should be deported, but regardless of what laws we construct, their are natural laws at work. Bad energy will beget bad energy."

Hmmm I thought. Does this mean that we should always turn the other cheek when we see something wrong just because we don't want to have shitty things happen to us? "No, thats stupid" my mom said. She mostly said that when things like that happen we just have to be aware that life isn't always black and white. There is a lot of gray area and that there are forces above and beyond human control that balance energy in the world.

So in essence, karma isn't fair. I wonder if it even operates on the idea of what's "right."

Case in point my chipped tooth. Is it fair for me to have to pay for services that were badly performed? I don't think so. But, b/c I don't pay, the dentist who took time and resources to do the work (even if shitty) doesn't get compensate = bad energy hanging around me.

I think karma also has to do with why my skin has been so bad lately. I often talk shit about my classmates. In a way I guess I carry an air (sp?) that I think I'm better than people. This is not my true sentiment, as I think that the people I'm in class with must have incredible talents above and beyond my own (even if I don't see it on a daily basis), BUT I probably do come off as arrogant since I generally just don't care. Being arrogant, or even coming off arrogant = bad. So what happens to me? My face breaks the hell out to bring me down to earth; to make others realize that I'm not as flawless as I may seem to appear.

Fair enough.

So then the question is raised, does karma only work if you know you've wronged a person? I'm not sure about this one. I mean I know its not a good thing to not pay people. I know its not a good thing to talk about people in a bad way. But what about those people who seem to be nice and all but just have shitty things happening to them all the time?

Well I'd venture to guess that either A.) They're not as nice as you think or B.) Karma may work on a macro-level; in the sense that it can be greater than an individuals life such that there will be people in life who have it absolutely shitty and there will be people in life who have an amazing time with everything.

My mother also has this saying "don't let karma use you." Meaning, don't put yourself in a position to do harm to a person b/c you think they clearly deserve it because you will pay for it later. I'm pretty sure I know the person who dented my car over the weekend. There aren't many blue cars in the parking lot and this woman is particularly horrible at parking. At weak moments I just want to walk over to her car and kick it! But, I will not be used by "karma." She has it coming to her, as would I if I was the person to give "it" to her.

Today I also realized that I've been focusing on the negative aspects of karma. It should stand to reason that if I do a lot of good, a lot of good will come my way. I'm convinced this is why I've seen so many doctors with really good skin. I mean they look so good for their age I usually guess they're at least 5-10 years younger than they actually are. Med school is kicking my ass right now, so I don't exactly have time to be saving orphan kids at the moment, but maybe I can work on being a nicer person to people even if I don't know them... or care :)

I'm sure that as I continue to mature I'll refine my thoughts about karma a bit, but these days it makes more sense to me than anything else.