Karma bits

Dear President Biden,

In honor of the beginning of Pride month, I thought I’d share a relevant, personal karma-tale and then highlight an additional relevant, out-in-the-wider-world karma-tale I read about in the WP this morning.

So here goes….

I don’t know if you’ve been following the weather across the country, but if you have been you probably know that we’re experiencing quite the heat wave here in the Pacific Northwest. Today’s high was 86 as was yesterday’s high – it’s been crazy hot here for this time of year. Even early in the mornings when I take my walks, it’s been hot. Consequently it’s been somewhat tricky to circumnavigate all the other walkers who are out early ahead of the heat since we’re all favoring the East side of the streets to stay within the nice long shadows the houses cast.

Well, this morning I was trucking along enjoying the shade when I saw a woman coming towards me. She was walking her dog and talking on the phone and didn’t seem to notice that we were going to have a social distancing issue very soon if one of us didn’t go ahead and cross. By that point in my walk I’d already been the yielder a bunch of times and was feeling fussy about having to head across the street, yet again, into the sun. But, I did since it was the thing to do under the circumstances. I have to confess that I kept looking over to see if she might acknowledge my largesse, but no – she was engrossed in her phone call.

The karma deal came up right then, though, which was that on the sidewalk was the cutest, sweetest thing that I would not have seen had I not yielded to the dog-walking, phone-talking woman. A young child had used a piece of paper with a pre-printed elaborate faux frame (as in gold leaf with lots of swirls) to write in their small child handwriting “You Are My Sunshine,” complete with one forward and one backward “N” and the best nonsensical splitting of letters across lines possible. Super adorable!

The basic positive karma aspect of this should be obvious, but the reason it’s relevant to Pride month is that I got to send Laura a text with a picture of the message, which she very much appreciated.

Ok, there’s that (rather long-winded description) of my little personal karma event and now here’s the one that made the papers:

It happened Sunday on Moses Lake, which is near Spokane, WA, and it involved three people on a motorboat harassing another boat of people because the boat #1 people didn’t like the gay pride flags boat #2 was flying. Apparently the people on boat #1 were really obnoxious, yelling slurs, flipping the bird, and circling around boat #2 bunches of times. Well, when the boat #2 people finally got tired of expressing their homophobia and headed away, their boat burst into flames! Literally. The picture of boat #1 engulfed in flames is very dramatic.

And, of course, the boat #2 people ended up pulling the boat #1 people out of the water, as decent humans are wont to do. Sadly (mostly for them), the boat #1 people were not only, not appreciative, but they continued to be abusive and rude. They probably could have salvaged their karma at least a little bit if they’d eaten some crow and had given a begrudging thank you for not being left in the middle of that very large lake with their burning boat. As it is, though, I think they piled a ton more bad karma onto themselves. It’s amazing how messed up some people are.

May we all be safe from our own base, mean-spirited, tendencies, whatever they are.
May we all be willing to pay attention when the universe is knocking us upside the head.
May we all be strong and secure enough to respect other people’s humanity.
May we all accept that every one of us is a “unique and irreplaceable work of art carrying intrinsic and unsurpassable worth”*.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson

*this quote is from Julius Goat and the entire series of posts is well worth reading.