There's Some Karma in My Cereal

Well folks, I've decided that today I'm going to talk about a couple of my favorite things: karma and fate. Both intertwine masterfully to influence our every day lives, yet they're unseen oddities that often occur on a mysterious level. As a personal side note, over the last few months, I've solidified a tattoo idea - I want to get a symbol that personally references these two ideals to always remind myself that I can't control what happens in life, fate handles that, but I can control the karma brought upon myself. 

Like most things in life, my love of karma and fate have stemmed from hard-fought lessons and resulting consequences. Because what would we be without hindsight, learning or evolving? I want to start by talking about karma. 

Over the last few years, I have become a firm believer in this notion. "What goes around, comes around" and "reap what one sows" have become important facets to my daily being. Sometimes I fail at living up to the standards I so desperately want to adhere to - I'm only human, after all. But I truly want to become better and inflict only positive karma on myself. However, we've all done something in our past that we're not necessarily proud of - myself included - and we've all experienced the sometimes known, sometimes less obvious repercussions. A bad day, sickness, worry and doubt, job troubles, a break up, etc.; karma strikes in a variety of ways.

During a conversation about a richer family we know, my best friend asked the question "what kind of karma do you have to build up in a past life to be born into such a thing?" It's an excellent question, if you take the time to think about it. Why are some so unlucky, while others live in excess amounts of wealthy, beauty and success? Is it karma from a previous life, or simply the universe's way of teaching us lessons and making us stronger? And what about the whole phenomenon of good things happen to good people? Plenty of bad things happen to good people as well - is that simply karma from actions of a past life or something more? 

What about the people that seem to escape from the treacheries of karma? This is something I often wonder, questioning how someone can get away with an action or word unscathed of the negative karmic consequences. Maybe it's coming at a later time in life, as karma has no time limit. Or maybe it's already happened in a smaller form that isn't easily seen. Regardless, I know there have been plenty of times where I wished karmic retribution on people and  wonder when that time will come or what it might entail. 

I have been bitten in the ass numerous times because of karma. In fact, I'm still in the process of dealing with emotional turmoils that I feel are due to previous actions (or maybe I'm just crazy... either one). Because of this, and the negativity that flooded my life recently, I'm done nothing but strive to be better in all areas of my life. I've pledged 2013 to be the year where I firmly and completely become stronger, more positive and overall, better. I've done my fair share of bad mouthing, back stabbing, complaining, name calling, blaming, etc. And besides the emotional release of getting things off my chest, it's done nothing for me besides bring a dark cloud over my life. And I don't want the negative karmic interventions any more. When I first began my journey of self-betterment, I started apologizing for past grievances, renewing friendships that were lost, working on being a better family member, friend and girlfriend, and more. Maybe I took on too much too fast, or tried to repair things that were lost causes, but it didn't work out. I returned to doing things, saying things that didn't benefit me or my wanted frame-of-mind.

Karma is a mean, twisted, unknown prowess who affects each and every one of us in ways we don't always see or understand. I've been affected by her curse and touched by her blessings, and through everything, have become a strong believer in karmic consequences. 

Moving on, I want to talk about fate a little bit. Fate is an oxymoron, if you will. It's often said that we make our own fate by our decisions and choices, but at the same time, our fate is ultimately a predetermined course of events. So everything we may decide, that we think we're doing of our own free will, is how it's meant to happen. Every person we meet, everywhere we go, every second of every day is a carefully laid out story line in the book of our life. The events are inevitable and unavoidable. So why do we go out of our way, often times stressing ourselves out, to control every aspect of our lives? Things happen for a reason, and though we may not always like how they turn out, we can't do anything about it.

All we can do is change ourselves, our perspectives, our acceptance and our attitudes. 

From now on, I will work towards "amor fati", or love of one's fate. It's an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in life, including suffering, as good. Moreover, it's an acceptance of events or situations. This is a moral characteristic that I have long struggled with, that I hope to work on truly embracing and overcoming. In fact, I think I just came up with a new tattoo idea. 

In closing, I just want to express my hope that people start to focus on achieving positive karma while striving to be better in all facets of life. I also hope that in the future, both karmic forces and fate render their hold on my life to be nothing short of positive and help to influence me in the best, most positive ways possible. 

xx and amor fati,

- A