Do you believe in karma?
I opened the back door this morning and took my first fresh breath of fall.
Not fall is technically coming and the calendar says so fall. Actual fall. Cool air sliding in through the door, carrying that little promise that summer has finally loosened its hot, sticky grip on all of us.
It is Dolly Day and Comic Book Day. I have coffee. The dogs are doing whatever dogs do when they are very certain that I should be doing it with them. And WordPress asked me whether I believe in karma.
Baby, I am all the way up.
I think we have made karma into something much smaller than it is. We use it like a threat sometimes. Karma will get them. We mean that somebody who hurt us will eventually get what is coming to them, preferably where we can see it happen. A flat tire in the rain. A public humiliation. Their own bad behavior boomeranging around and smacking them directly in the forehead.
And listen. I understand the appeal.
But that is not really what I mean when I say I believe in karma.
The religious and traditional idea is much deeper than a cosmic revenge machine. It is about action, intention, consequence, and the things we set in motion by how we move through the world. Modern folks have distilled it down to “what goes around comes around,” which is not entirely wrong, but it leaves out the part that matters most to me.
Karma is more than keeping score.
We all leave a trail behind us. Like a carbon footprint, except it is made of the energy we bring into rooms, relationships, jobs, homes, and communities. Do people feel safer after we have been there? Do they feel seen? Do they have a little more room to breathe?
Or do they brace themselves?
You can feel it in places.
The best compliment I have ever received was from someone who came into my house and said it felt like walking into a hug. The energy was so good.
That mattered to me more than any compliment about the furniture or the paint color or whether I had managed to keep the kitchen from looking like a small herd of raccoons had held a union meeting in it. Because a house does not feel like a hug by accident.
A house holds what is poured into it.
It holds the welcome. The laughter. The animals who belong there. The people who have been allowed to come in, sit down, get comfortable, and be themselves without having to audition for a place at the table. It holds the hard conversations that ended in love anyway. It holds the coffee, the grief, the small celebrations, the people who knew they could show up as they were.
That is karma to me.
And the same is true in the opposite direction. We have all been in houses where the air feels tight. Workplaces where old meanness is so embedded in the walls that a new person walks in already braced for impact. Families where everybody knows what cannot be said, who cannot be disappointed, which peace must be kept at all costs.
Nothing supernatural has to happen for us to understand that something has been left there.
People leave things behind.
That does not mean every good person gets rewarded in a neat little package with a bow. Evil people thrive sometimes. Cruel people make money. Mean people get promoted. The world is not tidy enough to promise otherwise, and I am suspicious of anybody trying to sell me a spiritual explanation that requires us to ignore what is right in front of our faces.
But we do not know the cost.
We see the up a lot of times. We see the money, the title, the pretty vacation pictures, the applause. We do not see what it costs somebody to live inside the energy they create. We do not know what follows them home after the audience is gone. We do not know whether they are surrounded by people who love them or people who need something from them.
And honestly, I do not have to see karma in motion to know it is there.
All I have to do is pay attention.
Pay attention to who gathers when someone is hurting. Pay attention to the way people’s faces change when a beloved person’s name is mentioned. Pay attention to whether a place makes people feel smaller or safer. Pay attention to what remains after somebody has passed through a life, a room, a home, or this world.
Today is Dolly Day.
That celebration did not appear because grief got bored one afternoon and needed a hobby. That is here because Dolly put something good into the world. She gave people love worth remembering, joy worth repeating, a piece of herself worth carrying forward.
And we are still seeing the response.
People will say her name. They will share the things that made them laugh and cry and feel. They will make room for her. That is karma in motion too. Not punishment. Not scorekeeping. Not a celestial ledger balancing itself for our satisfaction.
Love leaving a mark.
That is the kind of karma I believe in.
So I am going to keep trying to leave places a little warmer than I found them. I am going to keep making room at the table. I am going to keep building a house, a porch, a Grove that feels like walking into a hug.
Because what we put into something holds energy.
And because someday, whether I get to see it or not, I hope somebody feels a little more welcome because I was here.
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