Karma

What goes around, comes around, right? I have spent long-winded passages declaring my overall belief in being a good person, leading a good life, setting a good example, and falling asleep with a clear conscience. And I guess I figured that in the long run, as the idea of karma implies, any bad luck or hard times I've come across will be lost and forgotten when the good will of the world wraps me up in a blanket of warmth, blessing me with happiness and more or less rewarding me for being a 'good person.' I declared this because I do not consider myself a religious man, so instead of living my life for God, or living my life with the sole purpose of finding myself in heaven once my time expires, or whatever reason people give for following rules, laws, and commandments, I am content with helping those around me and doing everything I described in sentence #2.

With all that being said, is believing in the idea of karma inherently selfish? Mind you, I could write the same thing about those who live life for God or for heaven or whatever reason, but that's not my sack of potatoes.

I once questioned where people get their motivation from, and I guess that is the root of what's going on here. Do people perform good deeds because they believe that it will, in some way, come back around. And if so, is that good deed tainted? Closer to home, do I believe that? People always tell me that I'm a good person, that good things will come my way, that I impact lives in a positive way, and in some way, this is my motivation. Making the lives of those around me better makes me feel better. It's not truly masochistic, since it doesn't always cause me pain, but at some point, the happiness of others is more important than my own. So in that way, I get pleasure out of 'doing the good deeds of karma,' or however you want to describe it.

But I also really want to believe that I will be, as I said 'rewarded' in some way. I mean, if I am always caring for and taking care of others, I would hope that one day, whether its a full life or an eternal afterlife, my actions can be justified and the universe can once again hang in balance. I'm not saying that I'm unhappy now. I honestly have very little to complain about. So then I guess I would hope that as I continue on my journey, that the effort I put in is reciprocated by the results. In simple terms, I hope the ends justify the means.

But isn't there an unmistakable scent of selfishness in those last two paragraphs? How can you separate the desire to help others with the hope that it's not a wasted effort? I explain all of this because I believe it is rare, nearly impossible to find someone who does something good without thinking about karma. Maybe that's the cynic in me, and I hope that the world can at some time convince me that it's made up of good people. The Dark Knight seems to think so, and in reality, like Tweek says on South Park, 'even though all the news is about murderers and abductors, those kind of people only make up a very small part of the world.' But for now, I'm not convinced.

I don't know if it will ever be possible for me to do a good deed without thinking that there is some form of benefit for myself. So maybe I'm not the best person in the world, I'm no Saint, I'm no Angel, I'm no other mythologically moral creature; I'm just a regular guy with a solid approach to the world. And I don't think I realized this when I started mulling over the idea of karma, but if the world was made up of people selfishly playing their cards in hopes of it coming back around, then you'd be surprised how much happier this world would be.

In reality, I think karma is a bunch of hogwash. Bad things happen to good people, and vice versa. Don't let the result cause you to second guess your decision. Living a good life will see its reward play out tenfold as the world evolves, because the more you can impact the lives of those around you, then the more people they can spread it to. It's a pay it forward type of thinking. Hopefully that is enough to keep going.