Instant Karma

I keep seeing facebook posts about karma. Mostly, they're in the vein of "I can't wait for karma to catch up with that jerk" or "someday, karma's going to bite her in the ass, and when it does, I will LAUGH!"

These make me wonder if I understand karma properly.

I might be wrong, but if karma is about things coming back to you -- like, the good that you do in the world comes back to you -- then isn't hoping for something iffy to happen to someone sort of like hoping that something iffy will come back to you?

Look, I'm no saint. I know that when I do something that might be ... shall we say, questionable ... that it's going to come back to me. (Okay, I know that NOW. When I was younger? Not so much.) I accept that my actions have consequences. I also accept that I can't love everyone in the whole world all of the time.

But I also know that the more time I spend focusing on what other people do, the more time I waste being angry or vindictive? That doesn't help me at all. I'm not talking about meekly accepting when people are cruel or hurtful or abusive. You need to fight for what's right in your life. But I am talking about not wishing ill on people after the fight is done. If I carry hatred in my soul, it only hurts MY soul. It doesn't hurt the person who hurt me.

And that, frankly, seems like a terrible waste of time and energy.

It might also be ... bad karma.

So I'm trying something new. When any fight is over and the dust settles, I want to try to feel positively about whoever it was I was engaged with so that, rather than wanting bitter, horrible things to happen to them, I hope that they have learned from what happened, that they have found peace, that their lives move forward well. And I will worry only about how karma treats me. Because that is the only thing I can have control over.

I think that might be one way to find peace, after all.