So, somewhere about last November, for some reason, Karma put me in its crosshairs and has been blasting me with one crappy scenario after another. These last few months have been especially harsh.
Within the last 3 weeks, my mother had a brain aneurysm, my father had a massive heart attack, I pushed my oldest out of the nest, I took in a kid caught in the crossfire of his parents bloody divorce, the transmission in my car blew up, I learned my job is being eliminated, and my therapist just informed me that he is retiring next month.
So, as I sit here and think about ways to regain control of my life, I realize that I need to get Karma off my ass long enough to regroup. Like any other person, I am sure that I did something in the past, in this life or a previous one, to warrent such *loving *(enter sarcasm here) attention from Karma, but I was kind hoping I wouldn’t have to pay for my deeds all at once.
So my question is, does anybody know a way to get karma off my ass at least for a little while? Random good deeds? Love for mankind? Animal sacrifice?
You have my sympathy. Sometimes the universe just decides that it’s “dump on SBL” month. One of my best friends had that kind of summer–a ridiculously unbelievable string of horrible events. At one point her grandfather and her husband were in the hospital at the same time (happily both got rooms on the same floor!).
I don’t believe in Karma, fate, kismet, cosmic retribution, et al. That said, if I understand the concept correctly, here’s your problem (emphasis is mine):
It seems that the typical solution (well, advice, actually) is to stop fighting what life/karma/the cosmos gives you and accept that life has its ups and downs, that the ups are fewer and less frequent than downs, and know that you are strong enough to deal with what comes your way. As long as you stay true to, and act upon, your ethics and core belief system, you will have the emotional/psychic (in the Jungian sense) strength to deal with what the Fates/deities/demons/gremlins/@$$hats throw at you.
From a strictly Human Psychology point of view: we use ridicule to minimize and belittle other people/ideas. Try to find whatever humor you can in the situation and blog/journal/develop a comedy monologue about it. This can help minimize the situation’s sense of all-pervading gloom over you, and return the sense (hah! illusion) that you have some control over your life.
Try it out! Start with a satirical pitting of SDMBers who over-use slashes ("/") in their posts.
I do believe in karma (in the sense that we generally reap what we sow, one way or another, eventually) but I don’t think you should assume that what is happening to you is karma. It rains on the just and the unjust. You’re going through a terrible time at the moment, but it’s not because you did something wrong, or failed to do something right. Yes, sometimes karma does come and bite you in the ass if you do bad things … but a lot of times life just plain sucks ass no matter what you do
On a brighter note – it can’t, and won’t, suck ass forever, although at the moment it probably feels like things will never improve.
They will. You just gotta hang on. And you obviously ARE hanging on and doing a pretty good job of it - how many people could go through what you’ve been through, look at someone else’s life and think “damn, that poor kid’s going through hell, maybe it’d be better if he came to live with me for a while.” Very, very few, and that speaks volumes about you.
I don’t like the fact that you are attributing your problems to karma. If karma was real, it would mean these bad things are happening because you did something wrong to make you deserve them. You didn’t. Hopefully things will get better for you soon.
If it helps, there was a couple of years of my life, where I was convinced there was a special God in heaven, just waiting for me to drag myself back up onto my feet, after some blow had knocked me down, so he could send another blow. More than once I was pretty sure I couldn’t get back up.
Somehow I got through. Sometimes the only way through, is through. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Somehow, and against long odds, it will get better.
While animal or human sacrifice may work for a while, it is just a stalling tactic allowing the bad stuff to grow and it will come back much worse :eek:
My suggestion is acceptance of your situation and thankfulness for the little things, because in all that there is a guiding spirit to help you through what would be much worse.
It’s also not trying to regain control of your life, but allowing that spirit to have control and go with it.
If you’re up for a little humor (of the gallows variety): some years back, my sister-in-law and her husband (now late husband) were going through hell. Serious medical issues; “curable” cancer, but at every step if 95% of people would be fine and 5% would have X bad result, he was always in the 5%… other stuff going on as well.
A friend of hers said to her one day “What did you DO??? Run over God’s dog with your car or something?”.
So, yeah - drive more carefully and look out for luminescent canines.
BTW - good on ya for taking in the kid who needed a safe place. If there truly is a karma / cycle of reincarnations, that should get you a few bumps up in the next go-round.
