Does karma have a delivery schedule to keep?
Joseph Mackereth
I can remember it like it was yesterday. It was right after I’d punched my cousin for eating all my strawberries when I went to get more lemonade. My Grandma admonishing me to treat others as well as I wished they’d treat me. It’s a variation on a theme that everyone knows, and few remember to act upon. My Grandma would be so disappointed.
Now, if you went out to the tool shed with Grandpa you’d get a slightly different message. His advice was to be kind to everyone, but don’t turn your back on anyone. His was a more contemporary view of the world, less romanticized than Grandma, but it still started with being nice. I guess I should have taken my bowl of strawberries with me when I refilled my glass. Lesson learned. Don’t trust Becky with fruit.
I have become a big believer in karma, or in “what goes around comes around.” I have seen it happen too many times to discount it, and not just in movies but in real life. The co-worker who angrily fusses at the poor colleague who has no sick days showing up for work as being selfish. All that drama when you could have just doubled down on hand sanitizer. Then the complainant gets just as sick, if not more so. Karma? Or just an ill colleague licking your computer keyboard when you’re out of your office? I guess we’ll never know.
The point is, if you are hateful, selfish or greedy, you motivate those traits in others. If you’re kind, generous and cheerful, you motivate those traits in others. They become agents of karma, and karma has a delivery schedule to keep. Can you imagine if we could track karma like we can track orders through shipping software?
I didn’t mean to, but I cut off a truck on I-81 the other day to make my exit. Loud truck horns and finger puppets followed and my mouthing “sorry” to my rear-view mirror did not cut it in the apology department. What if I could go to a website and search for my karma package?
Okay, I cut off a truck in traffic. What’s my order and when is it arriving? Size varies. I didn’t mean to cut the truck off, which makes the package smaller, but I wasn’t paying attention either, when clearly I should have been. I was worried about getting to a brand new doctor to go over a brand new condition and I was distracted. Does sympathy points make the package smaller? Boy, I hope so.
Karma delivers for your good deeds too, you know. If you’re kind to small children, the elderly and animals, you will find the perfect parking spot at the grocery store. Your favorite cereal will be on sale. Someone will offer to take your cart to the cart corral for you. Little conveniences will pop up when you’re a decent person. There’s no neon sign, no lottery win, no free dinner for two, but there are niceties that fall into your lap, and those little things make life lovely.
Speed of delivery should be in play but isn’t. Just like many delivery services, karma sends you stuff when karma’s good and ready and not a moment before. Wouldn’t it be gratifying to watch someone angrily slam their car door into another car in the parking lot, then realize their own tire is flat? I mean nothing’s more fun to watch than instant gratification and that would certainly serve. But no, the guy who slams his car door into another car will have to wait. He’ll be on a back country mountain road with no cell phone service before that flat tire appears. Karma’s timing is kind of casual, but always gets delivered.
According to the karma tracking service, my karma for the truck incident is due in about two weeks, give or take a year. I’ll either lose an important paper on my desk and spend three hours looking for it when I’ve already filed it safely away or I’ll stub my toe painfully hard while going to the bathroom at 3 a.m. But that’s fair, because Lucky Charms cereal was on sale this week.
The story above appears in our May/June 2020 issue. For more subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription. Thank you for your support!