Do you believe in karma?
They say Karma’s a bitch, but they didn’t say a damn thing about her having teeth.
Personally, I would have appreciated a little warning. Perhaps a disclaimer, some fine print, or one of those ridiculous labels explaining that the obvious might actually happen. Then again, considering some of the spectacularly stupid decisions I’ve witnessed over the years, including a few of my own, I suspect most of us would have ignored the warning anyway.
As a man who grew up in the church, I’m reasonably familiar with the concept. Of course, we didn’t call it karma back then. We had other expressions, usually accompanied by a Bible verse, a stern look, and occasionally the unsettling suspicion that somebody knew considerably more about my recent activities than I was comfortable admitting.
We were taught to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. We were warned that we would reap what we sowed, and that certain things had a peculiar habit of coming back tenfold. Nobody ever explained precisely how that arithmetic worked, but the general understanding was that you might want to think twice before testing the theory yourself.
There was also that business about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
Wonderful. Apparently, even trying to do the right thing could get you into trouble.
By the time I reached adulthood, I had developed a healthy appreciation for the possibility that life was operating according to a set of rules nobody had bothered to explain completely. We were expected to behave ourselves, treat people decently, and make responsible decisions, all while navigating a world where the consequences of those decisions occasionally appeared to have been determined by somebody throwing darts in a dark room.
And after more than five decades of observing human behavior, including my own questionable contributions to the experiment, I remain unconvinced that anyone has completely figured out how this arrangement works.
I’ve seen people make decisions that produced exactly the results they wanted. Everything worked beautifully. They congratulated themselves, celebrated their cleverness, and occasionally offered unsolicited advice to the rest of us about how we ought to conduct our affairs. From all appearances, they’d figured something out that the rest of humanity had somehow overlooked.
Then, somewhere down the road, the consequences arrived.
Not necessarily the following week, or even the following year. Sometimes it took considerably longer for that brilliant decision to reveal its less attractive qualities. What once appeared to be a remarkable achievement became the very thing that kept them awake at night. And the cruelest part was that they couldn’t necessarily blame anyone else. The circumstances might have changed, but the seeds had been planted long before the harvest arrived.
I’ve also witnessed the opposite. Someone performs a simple act of kindness without giving it much thought. They aren’t looking for recognition, expecting compensation, or attempting to accumulate points toward some heavenly rewards program. They see another human being who needs assistance, and they provide it. Then, sometimes years later, something extraordinary happens because of that seemingly insignificant encounter.
Of course, not every good deed produces a reward, just as every questionable decision doesn’t necessarily end in disaster. I’ve known decent people who suffered terribly despite their best efforts to live honorably, and I’ve encountered more than a few scoundrels who seemed to enjoy remarkably comfortable lives. If the universe is keeping score, I have serious questions about the bookkeeping.
Perhaps that’s what makes the whole business so difficult to understand. We want life to operate according to rules we can recognize, preferably with clearly defined rewards, reasonable penalties, and some assurance that doing the right thing will eventually work in our favor.
Unfortunately, life doesn’t appear particularly interested in honoring those expectations.
Perhaps that’s why I find our obsession with incentives so interesting. We live in a society where nearly everything seems to require some form of compensation, acknowledgment, or reward. We’ve become accustomed to expecting something in return for our efforts, whether it’s money, recognition, influence, or simply the satisfaction of having somebody tell us how wonderful we are. Somewhere along the way, even generosity became something we learned to measure.
Consider something as ordinary as making a donation at a restaurant.
You’re standing at the register, trying to purchase a meal, when the cashier asks whether you’d like to contribute a dollar to some charitable cause. You agree, and suddenly you’re presented with a little paper heart, balloon, shamrock, or whatever decorative object happens to be fashionable that month. They write your name on it and tape it to the window.
Congratulations. You’ve purchased lunch, contributed to a worthy cause, and received a miniature billboard announcing your generosity to the world.
Now, before somebody gets their underwear twisted, I’m not suggesting there’s anything inherently wrong with these programs. The money can accomplish something worthwhile, and public participation may encourage others to contribute. What interests me is how naturally we’ve come to associate doing something good with being recognized for having done it. We’ve made acknowledgment such an ordinary part of generosity that we rarely stop to question whether it was necessary in the first place.
And I’ve witnessed the same tendency in circumstances where the consequences were considerably more troubling.
I’ve seen organizations measure a person’s worth by the size of their wallet. Someone makes a substantial financial contribution, and suddenly their opinions carry more weight, their presence commands greater attention, and their name becomes a permanent fixture in conversations about the organization’s accomplishments. Occasionally, the contributor begins expecting special consideration, as though generosity were an investment that ought to produce a respectable return in influence.
Meanwhile, somewhere behind the scenes, another person has been showing up every day for years. They’re cleaning, organizing, preparing, repairing, answering questions, solving problems, and making certain everything continues functioning. They aren’t writing enormous checks or attending elaborate appreciation dinners. They’re simply doing the work that needs to be done, often without expecting anyone to notice.
And frequently, hardly anybody does.
Don’t misunderstand me. Financial contributions can accomplish extraordinary things, and the ability to provide substantial assistance shouldn’t automatically make someone’s generosity suspect. But there’s a difference between recognizing the value of a donation and allowing that donation to determine the value of the person making it.
We’ve become remarkably skilled at recognizing the price of generosity while overlooking its cost.
Time, after all, is something none of us can replenish.
And perhaps that’s the question we ought to be asking ourselves. Would we still help someone if nobody knew we’d done it, if there were no plaques, photographs, public acknowledgments, or any guarantee that something good would eventually come back to us?
I’d like to believe we would, although I’ve lived long enough to know that human motivation is rarely that simple.
We spend an extraordinary amount of time assigning value to things, accumulating possessions, pursuing recognition, and occasionally convincing ourselves that these accomplishments make us more important than the person standing beside us. But sooner or later, life reminds us that some things cannot be purchased, negotiated, or replaced.
Death has never been particularly impressed by the size of anyone’s bank account.
I’ve spent time alongside families watching people they loved prepare to make their final transition. During one particularly difficult period, several families and I found ourselves confronting the same terrible uncertainty, each of us trying to make sense of circumstances that refused to offer the explanations we desperately wanted.
There’s something profoundly unsettling about sitting beside someone you love while the rest of the world continues operating as though nothing extraordinary is happening. People are going to work, making dinner reservations, complaining about traffic, and arguing over things that suddenly seem remarkably insignificant. Somewhere, somebody is having a terrible day because their coffee order was wrong.
Meanwhile, you’re sitting in a room where tomorrow has become an increasingly uncertain proposition.
It’s a strange world once we’ve been brushed by death.
I’ve often wondered whether, in some circumstances, the experience is harder on those preparing to remain behind than on the person approaching the end of their journey. Not because dying is easy, but because there’s a particular kind of anguish in watching someone you love gradually slip beyond your reach, knowing that all the wishing, praying, bargaining, and stubborn determination in the world cannot necessarily change what is coming.
You begin confronting a future that no longer includes them, even while they’re still sitting in front of you.
And there’s not a damn thing you can do to negotiate with the inevitable.
Under those circumstances, our priorities have a peculiar way of rearranging themselves. Arguments that once seemed worth winning lose their importance. Possessions we worked so hard to acquire become little more than things somebody will eventually have to sort through. The time we thought we had becomes the one thing we would give almost anything to recover, and the ordinary moments we barely noticed suddenly become the memories we struggle hardest to preserve.
Everything we hold dear is temporary. We know that, of course. But knowing something and being forced to live with it are two entirely different matters.
And somewhere in the middle of that difficult period, a young woman introduced me to something she called God Winks.
I remember thinking it was one of the coolest things anyone could have told me at that particular moment.
Not because I needed someone to convince me of God’s existence. My faith in God is absolute, although I readily admit that I frequently wonder what He’s got coming down the pipe. And occasionally, I suspect He looks at some of my decisions and wonders what the hell I was thinking.
But the idea of God Winks offered something different: the possibility that an unexpected conversation, a small kindness, or some seemingly insignificant occurrence might carry more meaning than we initially recognize. Sometimes these moments arrive with such remarkable timing that we cannot help wondering whether something greater is at work. They don’t necessarily change our circumstances, but they can change how we experience them.
I don’t believe karma and God Winks are interchangeable, and I’m not interested in pretending otherwise. But I do believe they come from the same cloth, at least in the way I’ve come to understand them. Karma concerns the consequences of our actions, sometimes arriving long after we’ve forgotten what we did to set them in motion. God Winks, on the other hand, are those unexpected moments of grace that seem to arrive without our having done anything particular to earn them.
What connects them, for me, isn’t some universal system of rewards and punishments. It’s the realization that life contains possibilities and consequences we cannot always anticipate, and that we don’t necessarily recognize the significance of an experience while we’re living through it.
That young woman probably had no idea how much her words would mean to me. Perhaps, to her, it was simply a conversation during a difficult time, one of those ordinary exchanges that happen when people find themselves sharing circumstances they never wanted to experience.
Yet here I am, years later, still thinking about what she told me.
I’ve reached a point in life where I’m considerably less interested in trying to understand every twist and turn than I am in making the most of whatever time I’ve been given. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped asking questions. Far from it. I still wonder why certain things happen, why some people seem to escape the consequences of their actions, and why others suffer despite doing everything they reasonably could to avoid it. I simply recognize that I’m not always going to receive an answer.
Which brings me to my fourth Golden Rule.
What happens in life, lean into it.
That doesn’t mean surrendering to every difficulty or pretending that suffering is somehow beneficial simply because we’ve endured it. Sometimes leaning into life means fighting like hell for something worth preserving. Sometimes it means recognizing that a particular battle is over. Sometimes it means grieving, laughing, forgiving, starting again, or simply finding enough strength to make it through another day.
It means participating in the life we’re actually living rather than spending all our time negotiating with the one we wish we had.
These days, I try to spend less time worrying about what life might eventually return to me and more time appreciating what’s already in front of me. The people I love, the opportunities to make someone’s day a little easier, and those quiet individuals who remind me that some of life’s most meaningful contributions rarely receive recognition.
So, do I believe in karma? In a manner of speaking, yes. I believe our actions matter, even when their consequences aren’t immediately apparent. I believe kindness can travel farther than we imagine, and that sometimes the things we do without expecting anything in return become the most meaningful contributions we make.
But I don’t believe every hardship is punishment, every blessing is payment, or every mystery requires an explanation.
As for Karma herself, I remain somewhat suspicious of the lady. I’ve seen enough to believe she occasionally has a rather impressive set of teeth, although I’m not convinced she’s responsible for every bite we receive.
And every now and then, when life becomes particularly difficult and I find myself wondering what’s coming next, something unexpected happens. Something that reminds me of a young woman who once offered a little comfort when I needed it most.
I smile.
Perhaps God just winked.
