Karma 101: Taking it for the team

Ah, such a glorious idea, perhaps the only system in all of mankind which appeals to a procrastinater. The entire concept is something that revolves around putting things off, both bad and good, until later. It turns life into a giant pilgrimage which one can never truly complete due to the inate fact that it requires you to finish in order to see if you actually get anything along the way. Obviously, good things come to those who wait...at least thats how the system appears to work in theory.

Theory is always something I've enjoyed. It requires no skill, no practice, and only a minimal understanding of anything. Theory is talk. Talk is cheap. So theory is worth absolutely nothing until proven. So how can a system based entirely on chance and some ultimate reward or punishment truly be tested and proven? Well, why try to test what will answer itself tomorrow. Pretty much the penchant in karma.
Or is it?

I personally would like to disagree. I've spent a life-time of dealing with a less-than-understanding family and a take-everything-for-granted brother. I've been stabbed in the back and walked all over. I've lost just about everything I'd put value into at one point in time. I've been so low, morally at least, that I doubted I could get much lower without being utterly abandoned. Yet, here I am at the pinnacle of existance, itchy and restless when I'm lonely. I have good friends with similar intrests, I have an amazing girlfriend who means the world over to me, and I lived to see a new year 19 times so far.

I don't think that's half bad, what about you? Sure, one could say that the higher you get, the farther you'll fall...but who's to say you don't fall first, and then pick yourself back up? Who's to say I won't keep rising? If everything that I'd considered valuable had been stripped from me at one point, left me decadent morally and emotionally, then I'd have to say I'd hit a pretty low place once in my life. It'd be hard to get there again...I'd have to lose all my friends, move to a country where I had no understanding of the language and no common ground with the people, be stripped of any family bonds, and have my girlfriend tell me I'll never be good enough for anyone...
Yea, that might rival where I was a couple years ago.
Might. I was likely lower, as I was younger and felt overwhelmed by it all. Having experienced it before, I'd likely use a bit of my experience and make it seem less low...or find some way to cope. Come on, I have to grow up some day right?

No, right now I feel as if I'm living proof of karma. I fell low, and now I've risen high. I won't take it for granted, I do my best to be my best every day. Give every man and woman I meet the best smile I can muster and the friendliest comment I can small-talk up. Even with all of 15 cents to my name, I think I could make it by on a hope and a prayer and a bit of the good will my friends would offer me as I struggle to make a living in the world. Even though I feel as if there is no hope for me sometimes, as if I'm drifting without a goal, and as if college is simply more school pointing me in a vague direction with no end in sight...I think I can make it.

Karma is more than the lazy man's system of beliefs in which you get paid back for what you do and what you don't do...its the ultimate optimists outlook on life. If I do good things, eventually I will recieve good things. If bad things happen to me, eventually good things will arrive to even them out. If I am in a good place, good things will happen to me so long as I remain in good spirits.

Karma is about taking it for the team. Every dime I've ever earned for any reason at any time has been spent on someone besides myself...unless I absolutely needed something to eat or drink. If it wasn't spent on someone else entirely...it was spent so that I could enjoy something with someone else on their whim. I'm a poor man because I invest in my friends, in those I hold dear to me, and in those who believe in me. To them, money may be the problem or the barrier to what they want and what they need. To me, their belief and their happiness is worth more to me than anything you can comprehend.

If following Karma, which if I recall is a buddhist teaching, leaves me a poor and humble man (well...humble generally means humility...and I'm not that :P) then so be it. So long as my friends are happy and they continue to believe in me, I'll spend my poverty among the ones I love.