That's What She Said: Karma Chameleon
- Dawn Dumont | September 10, 2014
Karma is a fairly well known concept also known as “what goes around, comes around” or “is a bitch.” As far as philosophies go, it’s pretty simple: whatever bad you do, will be done unto upon you. Maybe not tomorrow, but someday – cuz karma – like an elephant or an abscessed tooth – never forgets.
The whole point of karma is to teach you that there are consequences to acting like a dick. But I find that message gets lost. A lot of times, I’ve seen people treating karma like a kind of spiritual pit bull: “Go get his ass Karma, you get him real good!” For their sake, I hope there’s no bad karma incurred from being a vindictive asshole.
Karma and I have a pretty close relationship. Whenever I do wrong, it’s always there to deliver a swift kick to the ass. When I younger, I used to steal my sister’s clothes all the time. (My brother’s clothes were safe as like most teenage boys he had a strong goat like smell.) Going home from University was like shopping to me – but the free kind. I would browse through her closets and take whatever I wanted. My rationalization was that my sister was taller and therefore had already won the genetic lottery and I was just evening up the score. Karma did not agree.
While moving one summer, all of my clothes were stolen. (Except for the clothes that I was wearing – you’d have to be a pretty good thief to pull that off.)
How could this happen? Well, at the time, my family was obsessed with giant suitcases. These suitcases were three times the size of a normal suitcase, suitable for moving an entire wardrobe or a dead horse. On a holiday my large family would throw all of our clothes in the same suitcase thus saving us the trouble of having to carry several smaller suitcases. There were many problems with this system like when the wheels broke on one of our giant suitcases and we had to take turns dragging or pushing it through hotel hallways like Egyptian slaves working on the pyramids. Or when it got stolen and everything you owned and loved was in it.
I remember the moment when I told my parents about the theft: “My clothes are gone. All of them.” I had a loopy half-smile on my face because I was in shock. My mom was sad for me, my dad was sad for himself as he was inevitably the bank that helped restore my wardrobe. (Not sure what he did to deserve that – but it must have been bad!)
Another karmic moment - in the past, I’ve made fun of people with bad teeth. I once described a guy as “looking as if he flossed with barbed wire.” Not to his face, however, behind his back, like a lady. This is probably why a few years ago, I cracked a tooth on a popcorn kernel, went to the dentist and ended up needing seven fillings, three root canals and an extraction. (I hope the dentist is still enjoying his jet-ski from that visit.) You might think – but Dawn, maybe this is not karma, maybe you just have terrible dental hygiene? Considering that I floss once a month, whether I need it or not, I believe the spiritual explanation is likely more accurate.
So if Karma punishes you for being a d-bag, then it must reward you for being nice, right? Well on this, I’m not certain. Every year I buy one of those Hospital Home lottery tickets and just before the draw date, I go on a “Being-Sweet-as-Beets” spree. My coworkers are literally showered with double doubles. I tip more than 20 per cent wherever I go – (except the dentist, screw that guy). On phone calls with my friends, I don’t check my Facebook while pretending to listen to them. I smile at strange babies, even the not-so-cute ones.
So far, however, I haven’t won squat – not even an Itunes card. I guess a karmic scholar would say that I’ll get my reward in the next life. But what if I’m super rich in my next life and I don’t even need a free house? What if I’m so rich that I’m like, “oh great another house to hire a cleaning staff for!”
Karma is the universe’s way of punishing the bad guys and rewarding the good guys and it’s a law that works even when our justice system can’t – which means, Steven Harper, you better check yourself with the karma police.