Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge — Karma

It’s time again for the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Today’s topic is: Do You Believe in Karma? Why or why not.

Boy… this is a tough one. Do I believe in Karma as most people think of it? Probably not. Good things happen to bad people all the time (and bad things happen to good ones).

However… for the most part, I do think we reap what we sow, at least in part. Not all the time in every way, but if you put good out in the world, odds are it’ll come back to you in some way. At least, that’s something I cling to. I also think that sometimes those things that we perceive as “bad” are actually the universe’s way of redirecting us to something that may ultimately be better for us. It doesn’t always make going through those bad things easy, but it does give you hope.

I’ve had a lot of pretty awful things happen to me in my life (many I don’t choose to share here). When I look back at them, I can see how I landed on the other side in a better place. It doesn’t mean I didn’t suffer, or cry, or hurt. But it does mean that, without the trauma, I wouldn’t be where I am, or who I am now.

As an example that I will share, I had a moment in time where I lost pretty much everything: my roommate was buying a home and I wasn’t going to be able to live there (so I lost my home), the company where I worked was relocating to Colorado (so I lost my job), my father had passed away, my boyfriend of nearly 3 years broke up with me… you get the picture. Literally everything that might have kept me where I was had been stripped away. And, in that moment, I got a call from the CEO of our company who I knew well, and who had moved with the company to Colorado. He offered me a job, as well as reimbursement for the cost of moving. Did I go? You bet your boots, I did! And it changed the entire trajectory of my life. Would I have done that if even one of those things (home, work, family, love) had remained? Probably not.

Is that karma? Who knows. I’d lived my life as best I could up to that point, and couldn’t understand why everything had gone wrong (… bad things to good people… but, were they actually bad things?).

I’m rambling a bit, and have maybe gotten away from the point of the question. But really, a belief that we get back what we put out keeps me sane some days. I do my best to not wish bad things on people, because it’s “bad for my karma”, but I do (and thank you to my neighbor who taught this to me) “wish them well, but far away”. And I cling to the belief that bad things can happen for good reasons. If I didn’t, I’d probably fall into the depths of despair. Instead, I fight through the bad things looking for the good thing that’s coming.

I was told a story once about two boys. One boy, who always saw the bad side of things, was put into a room filled with toys. He sat and cried and said, “But what if they all break?”. The second boy, who always saw the bright side of the world, was put into a room filled with horse manure. He shouted in glee and started digging with his bare hands and said, “With all this poop, there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

I want to be that second boy 🙂