Karma Loves Kitten Kissers
A friend of mine once told me that I was gold. That we are all gold.
To be fair, at the time, I thought he was being a bit over-generous by including everyone. But what did I know? At twenty years of age, I'd just entered that time in my life where I thought I had nothing more to learn. I had done my time, kindergarten through twelfth...and figured everyone was now entitled to my opinion. If I ever had an opportunity to relive my twenties, I'd pass. Two decades later, and I still wince in remembrance of the selfish, self-important creature that I had been.
Sometimes, I laugh at the idea of karma. In my mind, I imagine a little man standing before a balance scale weighing everything we do during the course of our lives. "Ooops, that was a bad thing she did" The little man adds a weight to the bad side...the size of the weight in proportion to the badness of the action. And then we kiss a kitten or something that gives everyone a communal case of the warm fuzzies. The little man smiles and adds a lot of weight to the good side....because in the rock, paper, scissors mentality of karma, we know good beats evil nearly every damn time! Just like in those Star Wars movies...
Looking back though, I can better understand that even back then I was gold. A very crappy chunk of ore, with a lot of impurities....but still gold.
Call it fate, call it bad luck, call it karma's payback...I became the poster child for personal disasters. My family began to get used to it. My brother once even went so far as to thank me for pretty much sucking up all the available family misfortunes. I think what amazed them the most though was my ability to not only endure it, but then pop right back up like one of those inflatable clowns, looking for more.
You know those sayings, "That which does not kill me, makes me stronger," or "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade?" They sound sort of funny at first, don't they? We had the lemonade sign hanging up in the room of my second grade class. It always struck me as humorous. But after years of nearly choking to death on lemons, the perspective changes. It's a badge of courage...to show that you survived the worst that life could throw at you, be stronger for it...and less thirsty. If you'd had the foresight to build a lemonade stand and charge fifteen cents a glass, you'd probably be wealthy too.
I have another theory.
We ARE gold. Impure and unrefined at first, we are tested by many fires in our lifetime. Each time we manage to get through to the other side of that blaze, we are better for it. Our value increases. Each and everyone IS gold...and while the value maybe be different dependent on the impurities, the amount of gold is still the same. I think Leo Tolstoy said it best.
"Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold."
So when I'm having a really bad day, week, life...I try not to consider that little man by the balance scale. I try not to wonder how on earth I managed to pile so much weight on the bad side. Instead, I concentrate on getting through it with as much grace as possible. Good karma, bad karma...whatever...I'm a more valuable chunk of ore.
Just to be on the safe side though...I'm going to go out and kiss a few kittens.