TONIGHT! I will begin a monthly guest appearance with New York’s rowdiest meanest hardest drinking storytelling improv rock n’ roll storytelling band. No commas. BTK are doing a year long engagement at Under St. Mark’s, every second Monday, with Adam Wade as an opener. I will be doing a featured guest spot at each show. Me and my harmonica and my history of irresponsible behavior. Follow the links for all the info you will ever need. Then watch this video. Then read the story I am posting today which is actually about someone else’s irresponsible behavior. I, for once, get to play the sage. This may never happen again.
I call this story Stupidity is its Own Reward.
There is no such thing as Karma. There is no reincarnation, there is no hell, there is no divine judgment. If you are a prick in this life, then you are simply a prick. That’s it, end of story. All there is, is the choices that you make and the consequences you live with.
Hitler killed six million jews, two million in Gypsies, gays, communists, and Catholics, and I don’t even know how many died in the war he started. He was a miserable human being who lived his life in hate, fear, and rage and then blew his brains out instead of face the wrath of the world he had so offended. He was not reborn as a slug or a naked mole rat. It may be satisfying to some to think that his soul still exists, that his conciousness is now serving out a sentence in some kind of well designed Nazi version of damnation. That he is now a doormat outside the great synagogue in the sky or that he is currently nailed with railroad spikes to a front row seat at Hell’s reparatory production Fiddler on the Roof. Or if you believe in a universe without glib irony, that he perpetually burns in one of his own ovens from now until the end of time. It’s a nice thought. It would be deserved. It would be cosmic justice.
There is no cosmic justice.
Hitler’s only punishment was that he was Hitler. Is that enough? Nothing would ever be enough. There is no justice to be had for someone who kills eight million people because he feels kind of inadequate and has to put it on somebody else because, not only is he inadequate, but he is also too much of a pussy to face his own inadequacies. Is that satisfying? No. It sucks. Welcome to life. Hitler got away with it. With the exception of the fact that he had to be the weasely little bastard that he was. But that’s all there is.
If you hate Nazis and Emo kids...
You make choices. You make your choices based on the strength of your character, the experience you have accumulated, and the information you think to be true. Then there are consequences. Sometimes, you are a little late to work and your boss gets pissed. Sometimes, you work a shitty back-breaking job to support kids you can’t afford. On rare occasions, you rise to power, form a nightmare state, and lead a nation to the slaughter of countless innocents. Then you die.
Sometimes, you go to college, get the job of your dreams, marry the love of your life, and die while making love to said love of your life with a belly full of yummy Ice Cream.
There is of course the variable of blind stupid luck. Which covers everything from being born rich to getting cancer.
But everything else is the choices that you make.
I had a friend, Jack. Jack was a nice guy, a good friend, smart. I liked him. But Jack believed in Karma. Why did Jack believe in Karma. Because he had done something real stupid, he had really hurt someone, and he was a good enough person to feel bad about it. He was such a good person and he felt so bad about what he had done, that he had to believe that he was in for some kind of divine retribution. He could not believe that the universe would let him just get away with it.
But the universe didn’t punish Jack. Jack punished Jack.
Jack had dated this girl, Louise. Louise was a great girl. Patient and kind and good to children and small animals. I spent almost no time in Louise’s company because, quite frankly, she bored the hell out of me. She just never had anything interesting to say, so far as I was concerned. But from all reports of everyone I knew, and from Jack himself, she was a great person, a generous soul who would give you the shirt off her back and her panties if the situation was really that dire. Which means that she in no way deserved it when Jack slept with her best friend, after a three year relationship, then dumped her for said best friend, so he could establish a relationship that lasted all of three months. Because it took him three months to realize that said best friend was a high maintenance bitch who was almost insufferable outside the bedroom.
Then he tried to make amends with Louise. Well, Louise would have none of it. The hurt ran so deep that she could barely even look in Jack’s direction without bursting into tears of pure incomprehension about what had been done to her.
Ever after that, Louise was a saint. Jack mourned his actions for more cold beers than I can possibly count. Every girlfriend after this was held up to Louise’s example and each one found lacking. No one had been as good to him as Louise had been, no one understood him as well, she had been his soul mate, the best he could ever do and he had wrecked it on the shores of his own stupidity. And what was worse was that he had left her hurting, he committed a horrible crime against a complete innocent, and now his Karma was fucked.
He was drinking with me the first time this hypothesis popped up. I looked at him sideways from the other side of the booth.
Say again?
She was his soul mate, she was perfect, and he had hurt her needlessly. His Karma was fucked.
I put my beer down and sat up straight so I could look old Jack in the eye when I told him that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. First of all, taking for granted the idea that there even is a soul, much less a soul mate, if she had been his soul mate the bond between them would have been strong enough to forgive anything. It would have been difficult and hard, but the long view would have prevailed and eventually they would have built a happy life secure in the knowledge that he would never be so stupid ever again. That is what makes someone a soul mate, as I understand the concept. An understanding so deep that no level of temporary insanity would allow either party to consign them both to a lifetime of loneliness and longing. A soul mate works it out. Which is why it is hard to believe in such a thing.
Then we addressed the issue of Karma. Did he really believe that the balance of the universe had been so horribly shaken by his bout of horny decision making that it was now lying in wait somewhere down the space-time continuum to jump out of the shadows like Batman delivering some all too appropriate justice? Didn’t that seem a little grandiose, not to mention a bit self-absorbed?
I told Jack the only Karma was the Karma he creates. This was his Karma. Sitting in this bar feeling like a complete moron,
When you do an image search for the terms "stupid" and "karma" this is one of the things that comes up. The rest is porn.
and having the accursed self-awareness to know that he should feel like a complete moron, not to mention the good conscience to feel like shit about being a complete moron. His self punishment was all the punishment that was due to be delivered. That and all the relationships since that he had either poorly chosen or deliberately sabotaged out of this guilt that he couldn’t let go of. But that’s all, That’s it.
He said that couldn’t be it. He must have it coming.
I said he wanted to have it coming, because having it coming is the easy way out. It is a lot easier to believe that you are going to pay for your sins someday. That eventually the slate will be wiped clean and you can get on with your life free in the notion that your worst misdeed was an aberration, a blip in your over all inherent goodness, that once avenged by fate will be expunged from your record. Wouldn’t that be easy? It is not that somewhere in your personality lies an idiot waiting to get out and wreck perfectly good relationships and hurt people who only want the best for you. It was just this dumb thing you did with no explanation. There were no warnings to be found in personal history or essential character. You will be hurt in equal measure and all will be balanced with the universal mind once again. Peace will return to the land and happy healthy relationships will be the rule of the kingdom.
Doesn’t work that way, said I. You did something stupid and you hurt somebody. And for the rest of your life whenever you remember the look on their face when you delivered the blow, you have to whince, feel a little breathless, and once again wish that if there was one day you could remove from your life… And then you have to do better. Or else you are a jerk. That’s it. That’s Karma. Karma is knowing yourself better than you want to. Good Karma is doing something about it and changing your behavior.
Jack could not accept this. Jack had it coming.
In short order Jack began a relationship with another great girl. Susan. Now, some years had passed and Susan and Jack were older than Louise and Jack had been and some baggage had been accumulated on both sides. And like everyone with baggage, which is everyone, the relationship was prone to stumbling under the weight as each of them tried to figure out how to manage it all. We know a lot of Jack’s baggage, Susan’s baggage mainly centered around a long term relationship that had ended with a lot of pain and confusion that she spent a lot of her time trying to sort through. This had a tendency to make things a bit rocky. They were prone to breaking up, getting back together, breaking up, then establishing some kind of limbo, then breaking up, then getting back together, then back into limbo. It was pretty confusing and it was a lot to put up with. But if you ever saw them together in public it was pretty obvious why they kept soldiering on. The affection between them was so perfectly clear. They loved each other. They had issues, they were confused about what they wanted and where things would go. Susan was insecure and unsure of herself after the previous heartbreak and Jack had his Karmic debt and these things kept them from committing fully and getting on with life. But, the love, the deep and persistent desire to be near each other, was obvious, in spite of its stumbling and starts and stops. All of Jack’s friends, including myself, were glad to see him a happy little sailor even if the seas were sometimes a little rough. We figured they’d smooth out sooner or later.
Then, during one of their limbo periods, or whatever, Susan slept with her ex. It was a dumb thing to do. Which is exactly what Susan thought when she woke up the next morning. What a dumb thing to do. The good thing was that it changed her relationship with her ex in her mind. The mystery of the break-up was suddenly gone. What on Earth had been the big deal? One more night with the ex and the one thing she knew the next day is that she was now ready, once and for all, to have it be the last night with the ex. All the reasons why it was over, though still hurtful, were now a lot clearer having been back in the guy’s company and in another relationship. And this was a weight off. Thank god. She was free. And the first thing she wanted to do with her new freedom was give it away. To Jack.
So, the next time that status talks came up with Jack, which was about a week later, she was ready to commit. She felt honor bound before making the big commitment to come clean, however, and so she told Jack that she had slept with her ex. And it was a weight off, now she could move on, it had all been so dumb.
I’m sorry.
But, isn’t it great?
Jack was stabbed right through the heart. His Karma had come due. The pain he had lived in fear of all his life came down like a hammer to the sternum and it was delivered by the first woman he had felt as deeply about as he had Louise. What he had always dreaded and always known would come to pass had arrived. Like a bolt from the sky by some God of Thunder whose job it was to meat out divine retribution and about a dozen other metaphors for feeling betrayed by someone you love, even though you had spent most of your time waiting and anticipating said betrayal.
When Susan saw how much it hurt Jack she was aghast. There were reasons for her to believe, given the strange status that they had enjoyed for most of the relationship that, her actions, while insensitive, were not necessarily out of bounds or actually a real betrayal. Sure she expected the disclosure of her last night with the ex to be uncomfortable, but, things had been pretty hazy most of the times and there tended to be more gray area than clear black lines. But it didn’t matter, once she saw the pain Jack was in, she felt miserable, horrified.
Susan literally begged for forgiveness before the tale was through.
But to no avail.
What Susan didn’t understand was that she had been the conductor of a train on whose arrival Jack had been waiting for years. His punishment had finally come. All his worst fears had been confirmed. A central tenant on which he had based a good portion of his adult life had been verified once and for all. And now he embraced the cleansing fire of heartbreak. The betrayal became all he saw, it eclipsed Susan and all they had shared. Every weekend they had spent together, every morning over breakfast, every movie they had seen, and every restaurant they had disagreed on was lost in its shadow. He embraced the pain because the pain was his freedom. His Karmic slate was wiped clean. He had finally suffered a heartbreak of the magnitude that he himself had delivered. There could be no forgiveness, no future with Susan. That would negate the depth of the suffering that not only he was experiencing, but of Louise’s as well. The price he was now paying for his Karmic debt was high, but it had to be. If the price was high enough, then fear of that price could end. He would be paid up. Once and for all.
Susan literally begged to be taken back.
But to no avail.
Jack would now have his pain to keep him warm at night.
Susan was miserable and heart broken. So was Jack. Karma had been wiped clean for everyone. And everyone suffered all the more for it.
I don’t think any of this was really conscious on Jack’s part. But I think that when Susan gave into her fear, it gave Jack the excuse to give into his. And I think he had been tired of holding his at bay for so long. I think he was deeply, deeply hurt by what Susan had done. But I also think there was great relief in that pain.
I wish to God this was the Susan I was talking about in this story. But its not.
I lost touch with both Susan and Jack not long after that. When last I saw them they were still in the process of mourning the relationship and they missed one another terribly. But that was years ago, and I’m sure there has been some change since then. I did run into Louise, though. She has beautiful children and couldn’t be more sure that her husband is the one and only meant for her. Her soul mate. She seemed really happy.
