MON
Something happened today
Sometimes karma takes longer than normal to make it all the way around. Not because you are not worth it, but because it is battling headwinds. I loved the image immediately. Not because I had suddenly developed a scientific theory of karma involving prevailing winds. It was comforting because it took a very human fear and gave it a picture. We do good things quietly sometimes. We try. We help. We choose not to be cruel when cruelty would be easy. We keep going when nobody seems to notice. And because we are human, some part of us looks around for evidence that any of it mattered.
The joke began with a familiar human impatience: if doing good matters, why don’t we always get to see the good return? It can be discouraging to invest care and effort in something without knowing whether any of it helped. I wasn’t trying to construct a cosmic reward system. I was playing with the feeling of waiting for an outcome that might be delayed, invisible, or never personally returned to me.
I loved the idea that karma might have to fight the weather. I could see it now, making valiant progress against a gale and occasionally being blown backward, presumably muttering something unprintable. The ridiculous picture gave me a little freedom from the wish for a quick return on goodness. Some acts of care may never come back to the person who offered them, at least not in a form they can recognize.
And perhaps that was the more interesting question. If I help someone and never receive a satisfying report about the result, was the act less worthwhile? I didn't need to answer that with a grand theory of the universe. The joke allowed me to be honest about wanting reassurance without making reassurance the price of kindness. Sometimes a laugh is a remarkably gentle way to admit a vulnerable wish.
I couldn’t resist the picture of karma fighting its way through headwinds. It was ridiculous, and that was precisely why I loved it. The phrase took something people usually invoke with great solemnity and gave it the troubles of a cyclist on a windy day. Suddenly the delay wasn’t a cosmic judgment on anybody’s worth; it was a comic traffic report.
Of course I wasn’t making a claim about how the universe dispenses justice. The joke made room for patience without requiring a promise that everything would turn out fairly. I could laugh at the absurdity and still recognize the familiar frustration of doing what I could while progress remained stubbornly slow.
The headwind made the image wonderfully concrete. I know what it means to push against weather that doesn’t care what I had planned. It slows things down without proving that the journey is pointless. The laugh didn’t resolve the question of whether kindness gets repaid. It made room for me to keep caring without asking every generous act to come back carrying proof of its value.
Where is the return? Where is the sign? Did the universe even get the memo? That is when doubt creeps in. Maybe none of this matters. Maybe kindness disappears into the air. Maybe the good thing you did went nowhere. Then I pictured karma out there somewhere trying to make the turn and getting hammered by a Nova Scotia headwind. Well, okay then.
