It's been a while since I've had a post on karma. There's been posts on girls and saying yes more and posts on music and posts trying to find out who still reads this, but it's all been quiet on the karma front. Until today.
Karma affects a lot of things I do, and while there is a lot I need to explore and discuss about it, that's not a post for today. However, one of the questions I sometimes have regarding it is if -- like wealth, perhaps -- karma is its own reward? If like Earl Hickey you do good things because you want good karma, does it still count? Is doing good deeds with good intentions acceptable, even if there is a selfish motivation? Does taking a vow of universal compassion count less if you are motivated by the prospect of freeing yourself from the chains of the ego?
I like to think not -- because karma isn't a being, it isn't a sentient thing, but instead more of a natural law of the universal. There isn't some cosmic desk clerk of karma ticking off on a sheet of paper your actions and motivations, rather it is more a kind of extension of Newton's third law -- that every action has a reaction.
If all this is twisting your melon don't fret because I'm going to get to the point.
For some time, I have been considering volunteering in a soup kitchen. Working in marketing -- and the consumer side, at that -- I have felt that I needed to balance the scales. I sometimes feel that marketing, like advertising, is encouraging people to spend money they don't have on things they don't need. If you don't use this toothpaste or wear these clothes people won't like you as much. Naturally, this could be considered a "bad thing" and so for the sake of redressing my karma I need to be doing a "good thing" -- and this good thing I decided should be helping the homeless. I don't believe giving money to people in the street helps them, rather that if you want to help these people then feeding them is a good start.
It was just an idea I'd been kicking about in my head like a half-deflated football when in the spirit of saying yes more I met a group of people calling themselves the First Time Club, and took my clothes off for an art class. Each time they did something for the first time they would sit down afterwards and decide what to do next -- I had to catch a train home after the art class and I missed out on that discussion, but as coincidence would have it they decided on volunteering in a soup kitchen.
For one reason or another, I didn't meet them a second time. I forget why, maybe I was out of town that weekend, or maybe it was because the people I chose as my personal referees for the soup kitchen application didn't ever return the details. Either way, I didn't meet the "club" again and I didn't get to volunteer in the soup kitchen.
Until one day I got an email from the kitchen organiser, asking if I was still interested in volunteering -- now I was working in London again, I told him I definitely was interested. And the subject of referees was brought up again, so I dutifully contacted the people who I'd nominated and asked them if they would mind actually filling in the paperwork this time. They both told me it was absolutely no problem. Weeks passed, and eventually I heard that this time only one of them had returned the reference. So a change was needed, I had to say goodbye to the weakest link (a former employer) and replace them with someone reliable, my friend Calvin. If I'd used him the first time round it would have been a lot quicker, since he received and returned the reference request in a matter of days.
Next weekend I had been planning an impromptu trip up north to England's rainy city Manchester, to see fellow blogger The Wee Italian Chick and crash her birthday party. I'd been looking online at cut price train fares and bus tickets and budget accommodation and was all prepared to go ahead and book it - but I held off when I was reminded next Friday is Jon's birthday. It would be incredibly rude to be out of town on his birthday, so I was holding off for a few days until I knew what plans he was making to celebrate. Then I stumbled across my bank balance. I'm a believer that your bank balance, like your personal potential, is always a lot less than you like to think it is -- and the trick is not to look at it. I looked at it only to see if I had been paid yet, when I discovered that only had I not been paid yet but I was haemorrhaging money -- and had to give up on ideas of going to Manchester.
Rather than lavish her with gifts, Ivonne has asked her friends to instead do three things to make the world a better place. Today I got an email to say my references have been received and I am invited next weekend to attend a training session to work in the soup kitchen -- something I wouldn't have been able to do if I was in Manchester. It seems my karma has worked out there -- instead of partying I will be doing something to make the world a better place. The important thing is, I'm trying to be a better person.
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