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Cheryl Hughes: Old Fashioned Karma

One of my friends, who is a very hard-working, decent guy, did something that was not completely above board, and according to him, he was bitten instantly in his backside by Karma.

Here’s what happened.  He went to Walmart one morning to buy some craft paint for an art project he was working on.  He needed four colors: blue, red, yellow and white.  He found the blue, red and yellow paints for one dollar each.  He found white paint, but that particular brand was two dollars per tube.  Aside from the brand name, there didn’t seem to be any difference in the paint, so when he went through the self-checkout, he scanned the yellow tube twice in order to pay one dollar for the two-dollar white paint.  He used his debit card to complete the transaction.  He went home and worked happily on his project until that evening.

After dinner, he remembered he was going to order something online, but when he looked for his debit card in his wallet, it wasn’t there.  He had left it in the machine at Walmart while paying for the paint.  He had to call and cancel his debit card then wait for a replacement.  

“All because I took a dollar from a multi-billion corporation!” he complained.

The concept of Karma originated in Hinduism and Buddhism.  Those belief systems put forth that what you do in this life and what you’ve done in previous lives decides your fate in your future lives.

In the Bible, the concept is expressed as, “Whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” (Galatians 6, vs7)

The scientific community expresses it this way: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” (Newton’s Third Law of Physics)

My personal favorite is the colloquial, “What goes around comes around.”

I’ve said many times before that no good deed goes unpunished.  I had a dent in my car bumper, put there when I was donating cold Gatorade to thirsty band kids to prove that point. At my core, however, I believe in always trying to do the right thing, even in situations where others are not doing so.  I say that with the realization that you can be an undeserving recipient of someone else’s bad Karma.

A few years ago, I was with a group that went to a national park to hike some of the trails there.  When we went through the admissions gate, the attendant overlooked one guy and didn’t charge him the entrance fee she charged the rest of us.  After we got through the gate, the guy said, “Well, that was her mistake, not mine.”  

When we were deciding on a hiking trail, the same guy spoke up and said, “I think we should take the Cane Trail.”   We did.  We got lost and wandered around for five hours trying to find our way back.  We finally came out on the road that led right up to the admissions gate and the attendant who had overlooked the guy who hadn’t paid his admission fee.

In the words of that great philosopher Willie Nelson:

There’s just a little old fashioned Karma coming down

Just a little old fashioned justice going round

A little bit of sowing and a little bit of reaping

A little bit of laughing and a little bit of weeping

Just a little old fashioned Karma coming down (Album “Tougher Than Leather, 1983)

 
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