I was thinking about a little person I know, an eight year old, who experienced a pretty serious trauma in her life this year. It was a surprise to everyone, had nothing to do with anything she or her family had done, and after it, she and her family had to kind of just pick up and keep on going.
What I was thinking was that she, like me, will always have this episode in her life. I don't know specifically how it affected her. I don't know what sense she will make of it, but I'm pretty sure that it affected her, kind of shocked her, maybe created some fears in her or some ideas about how the world works.
Part of me was really sad for her, that she had this happen. In some ways, I pictured her being set back, as if she had been injured or handicapped in this journey of life that she is traveling. But part of me saw that she was going to continue to travel; that it was true that this had hapened to her, but that she was still here, she was still living, she was still her. This thing that had happened was part of her now, but as she continued on in her life, this thing that seemed so big (and it was) would get smaller and smaller as she continued away from it.
That was what made me think of scars.
I have a scar on inner right calf, just below my knee. It's from when I was playing on the hill in our back yard and accidentally punctured my leg on a rusty nail that was sticking out of a piece of plywood. It actually wasn't a traumatic event for me. I simply remember pulling my leg off the nail and then walking down the hill to tell my babysitter about it.
The event itself was minor, but the scar it left on my leg was a big announcement. It was thick: a deep red flap of skin that had re- adhered to my body, but had done so in a way that wasn't exactly flush with the rest of my calf. I remember noticing it as I was growing up, the way it stuck up, the way it never seemed to gel with the rest of me, the way it was always there and never smoothed out. It almost had its own identity for most of my childhood.
But I noticed it too as I got older. It began to stretch as I developed calf muscles, and, eventually, it flattened out and became a lighter shade of purple, matching the veins and other workings below my skin. Yet even in its stretched state, even as it has become more like its surroundings, it is still there- it still anounces itself as different and, in turn, announces my right calf as different, as changed, as not-like-everyone-else's calf. But at the same time, it is my calf. It is that calf that had that rusty nail stuck in to it. It's a part of me. It's what happened to me. It will always be there, even though it happened over 30 years ago.
For me, this is karma. Karma is what happens to you. I don't think it's good or bad. I don't think it's the result of something you did or didn't do. There was absolutely no intent in leg meeting that rusty nail. I wasn't playing where I wasn't supposed to, I wasn't "not being safe," my leg just swung over and it met a rusty nail. And forever, I have a scar from it. That event is forever a part of me. It changed me, it changed the actual make up of my inner right calf.
When it first happened, the scar was the big event- it was this big red flap that stood out and drew attention. But as I grew, it started to change, to stretch and fade in color, and maybe began to to bceome a part of my leg, instead of being its own thing.
And it's still there. It's still a part of me. It's really small now, I even had trouble finding it when I was showing it to friends this weekend, but it's there, it's an event, it's part of my life and "how things happened."
I feel like karma is like this too. Things happen to us, they just do. We're living in this world and we interact with it so, things happen. And some of those things, many of those things, scar us- they change us in ways that may be painful, that may leave a mark, that may alter the way we function or the way we see things. But that changing, that altering, isn't a stopping, isn't a determinant, isn't even always necessarily a handicap, it's just an event. And we continue, with that event as part of us.
I understand that there are things that happened to me when I was little. I understand that they are still there, that they will always be there. I can look at them, I can study them, I can notice myself around them and see them more clearly for what they are: a meeting, an event, an episode but they will never go away.
When I first got in to this practice, and started trying to see my suffering, to experience life as it happened rather than trying to change it or avoid it, I think it brought me some relief. I noticed that sometimes, the closer I got to the things that were upsetting me, the smaller they seemed and the more ease that I felt. I think it made me want to come even closer, to study it more. And often, this really helped. Those things that seemed so big, that seemed to utterly control me or create this lens through which I saw everything, really seemed to fade, to shrink, to even go away the more that I studied them.
But then, just around the time that those things seemed to be all teeny and tiny and managed in that corner over there, they would suddenly jump back out again and pounce on me, in my relaxed repose of "self awareness."
I have to admit that I felt totally betrayed by this. "What?! I thought I dealt with this! I thought I saw this. I thought I cried about this, for a week, and in every room possible. How could this possibly be showing up again?" And so I responded by trying to study myself more. I concluded that I hadn't seen this part of the event, that there was still more of it to see, that I just needed to experience this part of my suffering now and that eventually, it would go away too.
But now, I just don't think that's ever going to happen. I think that those events, like the scar on my leg, will always be there. I don't necessarily think that they will jump out and pounce at me- maybe they will, maybe they won't- but I don't expect them to go away anymore. I don't know that I even want them to go away, I mean, I can't have them go away, they already happened. But also, they just are a part of me, they are what-happened-in-my-life, they are my karma: ancient (they already happened) and twisted (how else would you describe the path of events that drew together to create my life).
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