You’ve heard them all before… Be the good you want to see in the world. The domino effect. The butterfly effect. Everything happens for a reason. There’s no such thing as an accident. What comes around goes around. Pay it forward, etc., etc., etc.
All of these are just different ways of saying there’s a balance that’s constantly being maintained by nature, and that one small action or even a thought can have a profound impact. I always refer to it as karma, which you may know is a concept that originated in India and is prevalent in Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and many other religions. Anyone who knows me or has read my books knows that this is something I wholeheartedly believe in and live by. It’s hard to deny it when I see it all around me. Just ask my kids… Recently, one of them threw a book, knocking a favorite toy off a shelf to the floor where it broke. His brother immediately responded with, “That’s called karma!”
That’s a very basic example, but I can think of other ones that are more significant and far-reaching. Have you ever done something that may have seemed a small thing at the time but ended up setting off a chain of events that had a much larger impact? You may not even see a connection between the action and the result, but I like to think it’s there. For example, maybe you saw a stranger drop some money, and you rushed to return it to them. Later on, you received an offer for a job you’d always wanted. Or someone did something nice for you out of the blue. I like to think these windfalls happen because somewhere along the way you helped someone when they needed it. Sometimes it’s not even a deed, but only a thought, or a way of thinking that can make the difference. The law of karma has to do with intention as much as action. After all, that belief that your attitude can profoundly influence your life is the basis for the long-hailed “power of positive thinking.”
I find that the more I keep my eyes and mind open to karma at work, the more I see evidence of it. Of course, as with anything that has to do with faith or abstract concepts that can’t be empirically proven, it’s all what you believe. Perception is reality. For me, the concept of karma helps me to make sense of the world. It’s also a useful tool in my fiction writing, where cause and effect must be reconciled, just as characters’ intentions and deeds can be a roadmap of sorts for how their individual stories will play out as well as the effect they will have on their world.
Living my life by the belief that everything I do and think has an impact keeps me on the straight and narrow, especially at times when the shoulder-devil (you know him, right?) tries to drown out the shoulder-angel. But more importantly, it’s nice to think that when I do something nice, someone else will do something nice, and someone else will do something nice, and so on, and my world becomes a nicer place. It can’t hurt, right?
Have you seen karma at work? Tell me about it in the comments!
