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I love it that BlogHers are talking about karma, and how December is a wonderful month to think about cultivating sweet, positive karma in our lives. Attitudes of gratitude never hurt anyone and may in fact sow you a harvest of good things to reap. But don't rest easy imagining that your Good Samaritan Awards serve as a firewall against the bad, because Good Karma has a dark side, a wicked sucker punch: her eye for the eye, payback-is-a-bitch retribution for your attempts to cut corners, grab a little extra, puff up your ego or just take it easy for a moment.
Bad Karma will be right there, slapping the cheshire grin right off of your face by tucking your dress into your underwear.
December is a perfect time to look at the effects of whacked karma along with the good, because Santa specializes in the fear of bad karma. The spin doctors originally in charge of Santa's PR plan (before he had to get more transparent and less flack-handled for social media) knew the power of looming bad karma. They didn't write the lyrics to say "You better do good, you better be sweet, and then you'll get a whole huge pile of presents to yourself!" No. They warned kiddies to be on guard against the wrath of Bad Karma Santa. "You better not pout, you better not cry, better look out, I'm telling you why...."
The why is coal.
Or something equally horrible like an Easy-Bake Oven when your brother got a Lite-Brite all because you messed up the Sunday School Christmas play by pulling on Mary's stupid braided hair when everyone knows Mary Didn't Have Braids. Sure, both toys were essentially lightbulbs plus plastic, but SO DIFFERENT. And it was obvious that I had offended Santa, while my brother had not. As usual.
Bad karma sucks and every kid knows it, but I will say that Santa's Karma is one of the manageable bad karma systems because your slate starts over on December 26th. A year is a decent amount of time to track your good and bad karma pots, and everyone is aware that Santa doesn't start tracking until around Black Friday.
The real horror of bad karma is when it is not time limited. Sure you can experience Instant Payback, both good or bad. But then again you can think everything is FINE and YOU GOT AWAY WITH IT and then (if one believes in reincaration) snap you come back as a freaking goat SEVERAL LIFETIMES FROM NOW. That's a big karma spread to cover.
So go ahead, pay it forward so much that Kevin "Do Goody" Spacey himself comes and gives you your own Keyser Söze coffee mug as if its a PBS good karma pledge gift, but you'll never know if payback for something you've forgotten is just around the corner like the car that took down Earl.
The universe has a wicked sense of humor, so your payback may well be comical. Karma is sort of like Joan Rivers, if Joan Rivers had more of her original skin. Just ask Angela, who blogs at Fluid Pudding. You must read The Story of the Cake Fail. It's proof that Karma will wait like a ninja for 30 years, no food or water, just hard, cold revenge, just like The Bride. With icing.
Or, just to be perverse, the switch might happen in the blink of an eye, like Megan Jordan, who writes at Velveteen Mind, found out when the wedding band that easily slid on her 4th-trimester finger but could not be budged seconds later despite the advice of the entire Twitter nation. Though it looks like the bad karma might belong to her husband. Yikes!
Twitter is a great place to track karma-in-action. In fact, many Tweeters hash their stories as #karma or #instantkarma. I love this one by Claire Spencer and this one by Allison Q. McCarthy. Gloating, corruption--that's the stuff karma loves to poke at.
Whether it makes you laugh at your own hubris and ego, or makes you do the right thing, bad karma can be a funny traveling companion: kind of a pain, but she keeps you on your toes. It really helps to read the stories of others who have been kicked in the butt by karma's steel-toed boots. When have you been caught short by instant or long-overdue cosmic irony? Share your stories in the comments, or link to your blogs, and Chatter to Twitter with the
