The Karma Bank

And spicy chai weather

Yesterday I hired a woman to help guide me and my build and design team through the labyrinthine process of getting all necessary approvals and permits for the house I bought in Provincetown, MA, last April. Where it has sat empty, waiting for me, but requiring payments. Since April.

I’ll be lucky if work has even started by this coming April at this rate, and I was expressing my despair to this woman, who is wonderful, and she said, “Don’t worry about this stuff right now. I’ll take care of the details and nuts and bolts here, you take care of dealing with your family. Your karma bank can start paying off now.”

I marveled at the concept. Is that how that works!

Like most Westerners, I think of karma as revenge. I’m fully aware that this is incorrect, but it’s also satisfying.

A guy cuts you off in traffic, a cop car appears out of nowhere and pulls him over: instant karma!

You’re at dinner with your mother-in-law, who says something mildly cutting about you per usual, and then starts choking on her steak: instant karma.

You gallantly get up and perform the Heimlich maneuver on said mother-in-law, and on the third thrust the piece of steak dislodges and flies into your husband’s cocktail.

Well, you get it.

Disappointingly, karma does not really mean revenge. 

Defining karma fails the elevator test. Like art and porn, everybody’s got their definition of it, and they know it when they see it, but it’s rarely explained in a mere sentence or two.

Unless you’re Taylor Swift. Then “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me.” Adorable. And so easily defined.

Given the name of this publication, I’m going to assert that karma is basically string theory.

Both are theoretical frameworks deemed inescapable. That right there is a head-scratcher if you think about it, but hey, to each their own. People making shit up and then declaring it “inescapable” has plagued humankind since men (specifically) first carved some playground rules into some flat rocks and proclaimed them facts from on high.

Or, as my father used to exclaim to me angrily when I had dissolved into tears over math homework, 

“But Marjie, all numbers are imaginary and theoretical. This is so solvable.”

“If all numbers are theoretical,” I’d howl, “then the answer is seven because that’s what I’m saying it is. And theoretically you can’t say I’m wrong!”

God, I hated sixth grade.

Dictionaries define karma as: “ The force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence;” or destiny or fate, following as effect from cause.

In the article I’ve linked to above, a serious student of karma writes, “I teach karma from a scientific point of view, because what I love about karma is that it is rational. Karma is like the laws of physics. It’s almost mathematically precise, and there is a great relief in that. Because if you understand karma, you really understand who and what you are, and you understand the rest of the universe too, because the laws of karma are universally applicable.”

Go ahead. Prove otherwise.

String theory, meanwhile, asserts that one-dimensional objects called strings propagate through space and interact with each other, the cause and effect of them eventually explaining pretty much all questions in gravity, particle, and mathematical physics, cosmology, and much more. It’s therefore a contender for winner of the Theory of Everything title.

Go ahead. Prove otherwise.

My son, Thing 2, went through a particularly bratty phase when he was about fourteen. It coincided with a growth spurt that made him very klutzy.

With fantastic regularity Thing 2 would say something obnoxious to me, turn around to flounce out, and accidentally bang his hand against a counter or door jam.

“Ow!”

“See what happens when you talk back to your mother?”

This happened so often that he was convinced of the cause and effect.

Go ahead…

Many seek to understand beliefs because it makes them feel better. That “understanding beliefs” is a contradiction in terms stops few from pursuing doing so with dogged determination. Hell, there are entire university degrees on this, with grades determining if students were right or wrong about how they interpreted the stuff some guys made up eons ago, and that throngs decided have meaning or validity.

Shrug.

Mmmkay. Long as it doesn’t get in my way or interfere with, say, my ability to get health care, or good education. Employ critical thought. Have equal rights and access between all genders. Live for the here and now without feelings of debt, dread, longing, or predetermination that might result in self-fulfilling prophecies.

Oops.

But back to that karma bank. I will admit to having done more than my fair share of good deeds in my life. But I’ve also enjoyed a healthy portion of less charitable thoughts and actions. I mean, sometimes people just need to learn.

Let’s just say I have an active account.

I’m a little worried about how low my balance is going to get as we go through the permitting process.

I wonder if what you didn’t do counts toward good karma? When I think about the number of things I haven’t said, the people I haven’t killed, the pranks I haven’t pulled, the dirt I haven’t dished…

Yeah. If that’s the case I’ve basically got a trust fund.

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Morning Teaistisms

It’s pretty nice out today, but the weather lately has been bitterly cold, and my bones are holding onto that like a grudge. I’m having a very hard time staying warm enough.

Time for a peppery chai.

This one has black tea, ginger, cinnamon, cardamon, black pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and orange. WIth sugar and milk I, at least, want to dive into it and soak. Or at least have a couple of cups. It warms from the outside and the inside.