Karma rocks the universe

Lately, I've had cause to wade in the deeper end of the intellectual puddle.

Despite my preference for shallower thoughts, I've been contemplating more philosophical and theological topics than usual — searching for answers to the most profound question of all, the first question in a person's life and the first question in all the universe: Why?

Specifically, I want to know: Why has all this stupid shinola been happening to me?

Specificallier (and this only a partial list, from only the last two weeks): One of my horses kicked at a biting bug, hit the side of the tack shed instead and broke out a board. Ugh. In the process of fixing the damage one morning, I was prying a screwdriver bit out of my fancy toolkit (that has a place for everything in which I put everything in its place), and the sharp, pokey bit popped loose and flipped straight into my eye. Ouch. Grr.

A few days later, I was standing in the grocery checkout line with groceries heaped in my arms when my sunglasses (which I needed to shade my injured eye from sun) began slowly to slide from the top of my head. They bounced lightly off the grocery cart behind me and landed on the floor — causing one brown-tinted lens to pop out and scatter across the linoleum.

Nuts.

While I was mowing that evening, the lawnmower kicked up a rock and shot it 25 feet ... straight through the rear door window of my car.

You're kidding me, right? I asked the universe. Of all the directions in the three dimensions of the world radiating from that single space, occupied by that little rock, it had to go that far, that direction, to hit that one small target.

That's just mean.

Maybe, I thought, I'm in a swirling vortex of bad karma. I've been considering that possibility.

Not that I have much more than the standard Westerner's understanding of the concept beyond the saying: Karma, it's a ... word I can't use on this page of the paper. But I am accepting of the premise that one's deeds determine the events which shape one's life experience.

Y'know, a sort of reap-what-yousow justice that is quite appealing.

We like to see good things happen to deserving people. Good karma, right.

Even when bad things happen to good people, we like to think that they will be rewarded for their grace and perseverance in their next life, or their afterlife, or on their journey in the Mother ship back to the home planet.

We smile with justification, also, when we hear about a purse snatcher getting hit by a car while running off with a grandma's purse. Ha! That karma is a, well, a bad word.

And I don't think it's just me who finds some sense of justice being served when, say, crooked executives lose everything and go to jail. Even if they don't get caught, it's still comforting, to think of the corporate-level theives one day arriving in a new, hot mansion at the 10th level of hell, or coming back in the next life as a victim ... or one of those giant white grubs the survivalists are obliged to eat in Australia.

So all this begs the question: What did I do to deserve all this petty misfortune?

I've been pondering that, but not coming up with a clear answer and, frankly, maybe I won't find one.

According to karma, my present series of ill luck could be a result of something I did in a previous life. In which case, I'd need a first-class medium and all my friends to perform a séance to channel that tidbit of information.

Or I could resurrect that old '70s Ouija board to spell out the answer for me. It could, at least, give me a couple yeses or noes, possibly find my lost keys, right?

Maybe the point is that it doesn't matter what I did to deserve woeful circumstances.

Maybe the point of karma, which is after all, about reincarnation — the future — is to figure out what lesson I should take away from these mishaps.

This is the only thing I can figure: Don't own horses. They'll break all your stuff and then poke your eye out.

Don't put your sunglasses on your head. It'll poke your lens out.

Don't mow your rocks. It'll poke your window out.

(Karma is a comedian at http:// viewnorth40.com.)