Karma-22

I often find myself wishing and hoping that someone, somewhere, of whatever deific persuasion, is keeping tabs on me for the many times I find myself generously resisting my baser impulses.

I casually mentioned (over GoogleTalk, 'natch) to a friend of mine just now the fact that GoogleTalk now offer GroupTalk -- kinda like a conference call on IM. His response: "Yeah. So what. Who actually uses that anyway?" I refrained from telling him that he dragged me into several group IM conversations several years ago, albeit back on MSN messenger.

Similarly, remember my friend who chastized me for not sending timely thank you notes three hours after I received a birthday gift? I totally bit my tongue with him too.

This past weekend I had dinner with a friend Lisa. She tends to blab a lot, monopolizing conversation, even to the point of interrupting my thoughts as they come out of my mouth. (I don't think she means to, but she does.) She's done this for years. I have never called her on it.

My brother is annoyed at the fact that I have Answer Call on my cell phone (the caller hears a song rather than the sound of my line ringing). The last message he left me was "Dude, you really need to change that feature. It's annoying." I want to tell him to suck it. I know that I won't.

These are relatively petty things, and things I know one really shouldn't score karmic points for, but I kinda hope they're building up somewhere. I hope they're sitting there alongside holding the elevator door open for bitches who don't even acknowledge the effort and telling the hot-dog guy that he gave me too much change. Small stuff that adds up, you know?

The problem, of course, is that once you sit there and hope that your good acts are going to pay you back somehow, you've removed yourself from the realm of pure altruism and relegated yourself to the selfish standard: doing good because you hope it comes back to you. Booma-booma-boomarang.

But I can't help it: I do still hope that those times I've volunteered at a soup kitchen help make up for the fact that I never give panhandlers money. I hope that my being the designated driver at a party helps make up for the times I've been an obnoxious boor to random strangers at a bar. And I hope that for all the times I overlook over people's faults because I want to give them the benefit of my good graces, I hope others are willingly granting me that same leeway.

They tell me the energy you send out to the universe is what you get back, in spades.

Here's hoping only the positive vibes I send are susceptible to magnification.