Tonight, I have karma on my mind. My “Murph” (see previous articles about Murph if you don’t know what this is) runs have become meditative walks, and they have been instrumental in my writing process. I had some major revelations on my walk today, and I’d like to share them with you.
I’ve come to realize that my goal with writing to formulate a life-affirming philosophy amidst a “world gone mad”. In order to do that, I need to sift through the grime and the muck that make up so much of this life. That’s why often times my Reflections will have very serious, melancholic tones. I need to write about these things to get where I’m going, but at the end of the day, this is all in the spirit of proving what I believe deep in my core - that life matters. At the end of the day, that’s what this is all about. The question of whether or not the things we do in this life matter, and what that even means. I anticipate I will be wrestling with this question for the rest of my life.
There’s something inside me that will no longer allow a nihilistic or material worldview - the idea that either everything is meaningless, or we simply create meaning and that’s that. I feel in my bones that there is more to the story than that, but I can’t just leave it there. I have an unrelenting desire to parse this out, to find the words that can’t be found, to name the unnamable. In my view, the implications of this struggle are extraordinary. Life goes from monochrome to technicolor in a metaphorical instant. Even in the worst case scenario, where I come to the conclusion that there is no greater meaning than what we experience - at least I’ll know I gave it everything I had to seek.
I think about karma often. In my mind, the ideas of justice and retribution have been shamed and obliterated, chalked up to mechanisms of an older, less-enlightened period. This bumps right up to the discussion of meaning. If karma and cosmic justice are just figments of our imagination, it’s hard to say anything matters at all. Why not just take and destroy? Why not live life for oneself and oneself alone? “Be kind” sounds even more bumper-sticker cringe with a context like this…
What if karma wasn’t what we thought it was? This was the thought that entered my mind today. So often we conceptualize karma as a thing done, a meteor falling from the sky, and action. “Play stupid games win, stupid prize.” In this view, we should all be waiting for pedophiles to get hit by buses and dictators to be struck by lightening. As we know, that doesn’t happen often.
What if, instead, karma was implemented through non-action? Through the things that don’t happen? Through the things we don’t see? This simple thought broke through decades of personal struggle with this topic. Everything started to make a little more sense. It goes back to the Butterfly Effect and Newton’s Third Law, which seem to be coming up for me on a daily basis. In this way of looking at it, all of the selfish, deceitful and evil things we do don’t necessarily cause bad things to happen to us. They cause good things to not happen. They sever the future paths of our true-selves, and we’re left with roads that are merely cheap imitations. You know who’s affected by this? The people we love. We may not be the recipients of our karma, but our spouses, our children, our families and friends - they are all potential victims of our wrongdoings, particularly in the things we don’t see. I’m talking about the traumas, the abuses, the unspoken pain. I think this is what people mean when they say “generational trauma”. It’s the process of karma unfolding through time.
The result of this line of thinking is that each and every thing we do, every moment of our lives, has extraordinary meaning. The stakes of life are suddenly exponentially higher, as are the implications of our actions. I don’t know about you, but to me this makes life so much more fun. That might be a bizarre way to look at it, but think about it - by living in the light and taking care of ourselves and others, every moment becomes heroic. Choosing commitment, self-control, honesty and integrity actually mean something, and something incredibly significant at that. Our “right actions” become genuinely Herculean.
Admittedly, I do not yet know if I am retroactively fitting this concept into the worldview I want to have, rather than what objectively is. That could be true, but for now I’m having difficulty poking holes in it. It just makes sense to me in relation to what I have read and what I have experienced. I would love to hear your thoughts on this - comment below or DM me on Instagram @modern.bronze. Let’s start a conversation.