My mom often repeated phrases to me that her dad, my grandpa, often said to her when she was growing up. Things like …
Karma’s a bitch
What goes around comes around
You reap what you sow
Tit for tat
They’re all essentially different ways of saying the same thing. They’re synonyms. So what do those all mean?
Let’s start with a definition. What exactly is karma?
The Urban dictionary defines karma as “getting what you give - if you’re mean you get karma - bad things happen. If you’re kindly & nice, you’ll get karma - good things will happen.”
Oxford reference says “In Hinduism and Buddhism, the sum of a person’s actions in this and in previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences. The word comes from Sanskrit karman meaning action, effect, fate”.
Both definitions seem reasonable to me. I’m certain others more spiritual than I would have better definitions.
The question is … Why is it a bitch? I’m thinking bitch is used here as a descriptive to mean difficult, hard or nasty. What do you think?
I haven’t had many times in my life where my brain says “hmm that’s a karma moment” but I believe I’ve experienced it a number of times. I just haven’t really registered it as such.
One situation that stands out happened a number of years ago. I’ve mentioned that I in-line skate and certainly have never been the quickest. I understand that a lot of people feel the need and desire to skate fast … my husband is one of them. It’s all good. I get it. There was one person who often made comments to me in such a way that I understood they believed I wasn’t a good enough or fast enough skater to be part of their pace line even while warming up. It was also clear to me that this person enjoyed skating. Unfortunately their skating life was cut short early because of an ongoing back issue making it difficult to skate. I believe that was karma as I’m still skating, still slow and not as often, but still skating. And they aren’t. I think that may even be an example of “karma’s a bitch”.
And funnily enough a couple nights ago my husband and I were eating dinner outdoors and he made a teasing comment to me about my brain being full of water … not 30 seconds later he took a drink of his wine and mildly choked. Karma baby, karma.
Until the next time.