I am not thrilled right now.  On Facebook.com, they have this whole application which allows you to send and receive virtual tokens of good karma.  It’s just one of the many things on that site that can dominate your attention for far, far too long.  I’ll admit, I log on there at least once a day to see what’s going on.  It’s been a great way to connect with people you thought you’d never see or hear from again.  Everyone from my high school days is a lot nicer to me now than they ever were back in high school.

However, that site is not the point here.  What the point is here is karma, and I seem to have far less in real life than I do in the ethers of computer land.  I’ve even taken steps to improve my karma.  For example, I was at the check out counter at the health food store, and the cashier accidentally rang me up for one deli item, when in reality there were four. So I, trying to live my good karma life, I pointed the error out to her, that she had accidentally UNDERCHARGED me.  I left the store fifteen bucks poorer than I could have been, but I was smug in the knowledge of the good person I was and how most people would have kept silent on such an oversight. 

After that, I had to see a foot doctor.  He was really nice.  Unfortunately though, I have either fractured some bone in my foot or I have doinked the tendon that connects to it.  So I get thrown into a cast and sent on my way until they get my bone scan results next week.  Here’s how I got this injury:  I got this problem because unlike many millions of minions who consider lunch hour as ‘that time when you move from your sitting at your desk to sitting in the kitchen,’ I actually go OUTSIDE and walk 3.5 miles while reading.  Yes, I can read while walking, and I do it quite well in fact.  Don’t worry about me Honolulu, even though you have a high pedestrian fatality rate, I’ll keep on walking, with my book open, I’ll even promise that you won’t hit me (that last sentence should be read in a ‘don’t cry for me, Argentina’ melody in the background).  I can’t justify sitting ALL DAY.  In fact, I have to do far more sitting than I would prefer in the first place.  So one day tra la la, there I was, going on my route, and then this pain started.  That wasn’t unusual, this bit of discomfort had been going on for over a month.  But then it got bad.  REALLY bad.  And believe it or not, I even ‘cowboy’d up’ and finished the whole route. Then I came upstairs, got on the phone and yelled at my dr. to fix this problem.

And then yesterday, my coworker who sits next to me, she was about to send a friend a birthday present.  Her original view was to include a Starbucks gift card, but she decided not to at the last minute.  However, it just so happened that I HAD a Starbucks gift card in my wallet that I received for one of my freelance jobs.  Now if THAT wasn’t karma or a sign from the universe of good karma for her, then I know not what is.

So here I am, I’m walking at lunch, getting in a workout, I’m telling the checkout girl I should be paying her MORE money, I give my coworker the exact gift card she’d been thinking about, I should be having supergreat things happening all around me, right?  Rather, I’m sitting here in a hot (and increasingly smelly) walking cast that’s created a painful blister on my shin, and I’ve lost all trust from my boss for being on Facebook too much.

If you subscribe to Louise Hay’s notion of ‘what you put in to the universe comes back multiplied,’ ultra super great things should be happening all around me, right?  Is karma like a point system, where when you gather enough you get a free DVD or something?  I don’t know. 

O we Americans are so impatient; perhaps we would have been better served if we were kept oblivious about such notions like karma.  You know we’ll just mess it up.  We’ll do something good today with the expectation that something great will happen tomorrow, when in reality, that good karma you created is perhaps making up for a bunch of bad karma you kept dragging along with you from several lifetimes ago.  Or maybe your good deeds today will put you in good standing in your next life in some way.  However, we’ve adopted the belief that these things/experiences will have a quick turnaround,  a sort of shelf life of a few days rather than a few lifetimes.  We’ve become a silly, overweight, shallow, lazy, ungrounded and lost nation that can’t even take care of itself.  We’ve been around the world, and we’ve exploited and/or taken advantage of  every resource, every labor force, low pollution standard, and have cherry picked just about everything else we think could be useful.  And lately, our scenery is one of extremes:  stock market volatility and panic,mortgages lenders tumbling, banks free-falling, insurance companies going bankrupt, and we’re fighting a war we know will never end.   In light of all this, from an objective light, perhaps karma has come back to kick our asses for all of our prior (and current) transgressions. 

So I guess I’ll just be satisfied that I’ve done a couple good deeds and know that good things will come back…someday.  I think it’s when you STOP expecting something, when you’ve essentially forgotten the great deeds you did a ways back,  when you’re least expecting it that some ramification from the good karma you created will decide to shine on you.  Until then, I’ll try to be a good person and not be so peeved over the fact that I’m stuck in a baking hot walking cast while it’s just as hot outside-like wearing a pair of Uggs over wool socks in the middle of summer…