Karma

I’m pretty sure that if you’re anything like me, growing up when you saw someone stumble into an unfortunate situation like tripping over their shoe laces, slipping on ice or even falling down you probably laughed.  As children, not knowing any better or possibly not fully understanding the potential injury any of these things would cause, that’s what you do.  You laugh… Because it’s funny.  It’s funny because it happened to them and not to you.

When I’d laugh at others and their misfortune, my grandmother, and subsequently my mother as well, would say “Be careful, laughter is catching.”  Now you can only imagine that as a young adolescent growing up that I had no clue what that meant.  All I knew was that I probably needed to stop laughing, which I did.  But as I got older and *ahem* wiser, I began to understand just what they meant by “Laughter is catching.” It was their Southernized-Caribbean phraseology of the age old saying “What goes around, comes around… “In other words; Karma’s b*tch.

That phrase popped in my mind today as I read a tweet in reference to Rush Limbaugh.  It stated “Rush Limbaugh once happily chimed about ‘I CAN breathe because I follow the law’ regarding Eric Garner… How’s that working out for you now champ?”  As most know, on Monday of this week Rush Limbaugh came out to say that he has been diagnosed with “advanced lung cancer.”  Lung cancer; a disease to which you tend to have shortness of breath, pain, blood in your sputum and fluid build up that essentially chokes you from the inside out… You can’t breathe. The irony…  But is it?

We see this far too often where someone, maybe even yourself, over stepped, misspoke or made light of a very serious and egregious situation.  Only to find that moments, months, or years later they find themselves falling victim to the same or a similar plight.  Take for instance Wendy Williams… she spent years on her radio show and talk show dishing all kinds of dirt about celebrities and having opinions about their lives and marriages only for her marriage to fall apart in a very public way just a few years later.  There are plenty more others but those resonate with me at the moment.  I’m sure you can think of a few people you may know personally that this or something similar as happened to.  Karma… It’s cause and effect.

At some point we have to realize that we, as people, can’t go around treating each other like crap and expect things go well in our lives.  Yes, there are those instances where one terrible person may experience tremendous good fortune and it appears that nothing bad ever happens to them (ie the Orange Crush mascot that currently occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Ave; but I digress).  And yes, it is frustrating as hell to witness it happen… However, karma is not completely absent in it all.  You see, sometimes karma has a strange way of skipping over you and attacking your children or grandchildren… or your legacy. 

Karma, is not always about “like for like” or “tit for tat”.  Just because someone did you wrong doesn’t mean that they themselves will get the backlash… It may come in the form of a sickly child, an ailing parent, a bad business deal that costs them a fortune, an unfaithful spouse or even being stagnant in their career.  I believe that karma attacks what you cherish most subconsciously, that thing that your heart desires most; whether its to be successful, or have a healthy child or a caring spouse… That is where your vulnerability is and that is where karma will pounce.

Our words and our actions have repercussions.  I honestly believe that if we really and truly thought about what we do and what we say and how that may potentially affect others, humanity would be in a better place than what it is currently.  I don’t know about you but I get so sick and tired of someone doing something rude or disrespectful or saying something ignorant on a socially global level and then having to backpedal and apologize when if they had just taken a moment to pause and think about what they might putting in the atmosphere; they might not say anything.

I guess the bottom line is… watch your mouth, be kind to people even if they aren’t kind to you, be truthful in your dealings, and be careful not to poke fun at someone else’s misfortune… Laughter is catching; and with all the great things that I’m trying to manifest in 2020, I don’t want any parts of lady karma coming around to steal my joy or hinder my greatness.  And you shouldn’t either.