Karmic return

My "real" first days happened yesterday and today. Monday didn't count, since I was assisted by my boss half the time. Despite my caution (or perhaps because of it), everything went well yesterday. The past week, and Monday in particular, had left me apprehensive to the point of paranoia, but the only thing that went wrong yesterday was that I got lost on the way home.

Today was the real test though. The other days of the week I only work 2 1/2 hours, whereas on Wednesdays I work 10 1/2 - 8 a.m. till 6:30 p.m. Everything went well enough, apart from that we got to the dojo half an hour early, and arrived a bit late at the library because I couldn't find a parking spot. It helped that they got up pretty late, and Kevin was tired after sport and the adult-sized lunch I made them (my cooking motto is "better to make too much than too little").

Today's biggest downer was the zip on one of my knee-length boots breaking at ankle level. I'll just have to get another pair when I get paid, which should be too much of a problem because I recently found a very cheap shoe shop nearby. :)

I often think of things in terms of karma. Not in a moral sense - good and bad things happen to everyone regardless of morals - but I think life needs a certain balance. When good things happen to us, they create a sort of karmic debt on the other side, and the universe (or God, whatever) does whatever it takes to balance the scales. It works the other way around, too. For instance, yesterday you had one of those days when all the little things go wrong. Late for work, forgot that paper you needed to hand in, couldn't find a parking spot - nobody died, but you still felt crap at the end of the day. Then the next day you win ten grand.


If we consider this theory with a scientific mindset - let us imagine for a second that chance is influenced by this tendency to balance - then the balancing action will always happen as a result of whatever events happened beforehand. Bigger events have more "weight" on the karmic scale, which is why winning so much money is equal to every little thing going wrong the day before or after. The good day is the result of the bad day, or vice versa, and the events that ended up balancing each other were completely random. You could have just had a really good day after the really bad day instead.


If you're spiritual or religious, however, you might think of this karmic action as the will of God, or guardian angels etc. who decided to make lots of little things go wrong instead of killing off your grandmother so you could win that ten grand. The difference here is that the events are chosen by some superior force and (according to popular belief) are what is best for you. I like to think that killing off your grandmother isn't so much "what is best" than simply unavoidable (I don't believe in an all-powerful god), and in this case whatever good thing or things balance that event are chosen in compensation.


You might be thinking, "if it was that straightforward - a bad day following a good day - we'd all have noticed by now". True. I think it works over longer periods of time than that. A really bad day may be compensated in a week. A really crap year might be compensated by a long period of good luck, or landing your dream job. I'm pretty sure my life works a lot like this, if not everyone else's. Nans' certainly does (and he claims he can tell whether it's a good or a bad day by how easily coiffable his hair is in the morning, but that's another story).

Aside from my spiritual eclecticism, I do prefer this way of thinking about life, perhaps because it's comforting to imagine that there is a system to it all, which gives me a (false) sense of control. Humans like to think they understand the world they live in, and I'm no exception. Anyway, it explains why my boot zip broke and I had to punish Kevin twice for swearing - it was so I wouldn't crash the car. :)