A Karmic Request

Karma n. The total effect of a person's actions and conduct during the person's existence, regarded as determining the person's destiny.

I like the idea of Karma. I want to believe in Karma. The concept is awesome. You clean up your act in this life – in other words, you do good and be good – and the next life, you come back in a superior form. Now, I do not mean to offend anyone, but doesn’t this sound better than hanging out in the clouds, albeit with God? But with karma, you get to play the whole world/life thing again, but next time (hopefully) with a Porsche and on the arm of George Clooney - may he come back to earth again in the same form. (Why mess with perfection?) On the other hand, I think, asking to come back on GC’s arm (and preferably his bed) can set my juju karma back a notch. Shouldn’t I really instead ask for World Peace? (or give me peace by deporting ‘big, fat, idiot’ Limbaugh back to hell?)

I embrace the idea of Karma with open arms: this concept of revivification of the body in another (hopefully higher) form with the same soul. Which genius thought this one up? Give her the Nobel Prize! (Yes, I am a feminist!)

Some of my friends call me the Queen of Rationalization and others say I have a PhD in Justification. Apart from returning in a higher form, I am trying to figure out what is the reasoning behind the idea of living a moral and virtuous life.




I try and rationalize why I should be good. When the cashier cannot make proper change (for a dollar) and has no idea which keys to press, I try and rationalize his incompetence. The poor boy doesn’t have more than a high-school education. Earning minimum wage is no incentive to work harder and faster. He is the tired, over-worked, sole bread-winner of the family...yada yada yada. The Biblical ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do’, is a good verse to keep repeating to yourself at this time.

I try and justify why I should be good. I had this dream once that I was reincarnated into someone who was given a lifetime’s supply of All-You-Can-Eat Chocolate. I know this will not come true, but a person can dream, can’t they? I have been a good girl and deserve to come back in some kind of higher form.

The end goal, of course, is to escape this cycle of birth and rebirth and make your soul so pure that you attain nirvana (or moksha for the Hindus out there).
The fear of karmic retribution makes me spend my life peeling off some of those proverbial sinful layers off my soul. Who wants to come back in the next life as a Raid-fearing cockroach? So I volunteer at soup kitchens. Prepare food at an orphanage in Mexico. Wield a hammer and drive nails into drywall with Habitat for Humanity. Donate books to the library. Perform random acts of kindness. I visit the elderly. I kiss babies (ok, this one is practice, in case I come back as a politician).

It is the soul I am trying to appease. It is the soul I am trying to ameliorate, with visions of better things to come in my next life. This means, basically, that all my work of polishing and purging, meliorating and purifying my soul will not go in vain. I get to keep this elevated (but still not perfect, I admit) soul and get a new bag of bones?

I hope they take requests.

I’ll have one ‘Body of Heidi Klum’ and one ‘Voice of Barbara Streisand’. And hold the fries.