Redemption

So I’ve been thinking about redemption. I know everyone has their own thoughts on it. Call it whatever you want, karma, yin and yang, some other theory of global or personal neutrality, everyone has thought of it. You do something bad and bad things happen to you, it balances the scales. The same goes for good deeds, you get what you give. That means that there is some ethereal accountant keeping track of all your debts and credits. I’m not 100% sure about that one, it does seem like a nice idea to have somebody constantly punishing the wicked and rewarding the good. I know I’ve struggled with the idea that I have some giant set of scales following me around. Even the court system buys off on this concept, they call it community service. If you commit a nominal crime you can make it up to the community by “volunteering”  your time, thus balancing your scales. The more I thought about it the more I realized that you can’t always make up for it. Good or bad all of our actions have consequences, we have to learn from them, embrace them, make them part of who we are and be proud of all of who we are. I like the idea of redemption though, it’s something I truly believe in. I also like the idea that if you don’t repent and seek forgiveness then the universe will do it for you. That doesn’t mean that I think it actually happens that way. I could possibly be convinced that our ethereal accountant tries to keep a balance on a global scale, trying to balance good and evil. Personal responsibility is the watchword when it comes to ourselves, it drives everything in life. It is the reason we become who we are, the amount of responsibility we are willing to take for what we do. This is directly related to our successes and failures, our weight, our careers, our relationships, and in my opinion what happens to us when we die. I’ll speak on the subject of personal responsibility another time though. The biggest question is what to do when someone makes a mistake and then truly realizes the error and genuinely feels bad for what they have done. That’s where forgiveness begins, don’t think it’s a slow process. Forgiveness comes in many forms and takes different amounts of time depending on several factors. Forgiveness for one person could be no more than not retaliating while for another it could mean completely forgetting all transgressions, it could happen in an instant or over the course of a lifetime. Either way it’s a big freakin deal. I have done many bad things in the first half of my life and set out to spend the rest of my life either paying for them or making up for them. The weirdest thing happened, I started enjoying my career, my friendships improved, life was looking good. My life didn’t “balance” because of my need to repent, my life got better because I found a way to forgive myself for the things I had done and started moving forward trying to live better. Maybe that’s where the karma is, maybe it’s something we do to ourselves, torturing ourselves mentally over our past transgressions. I think the bottom line is just try to live a happy healthy life and good things are going to happen.