I recently yelled at my kids about eating in the basement playroom and then leaving their dirty dishes on the floor. Seconds later I shredded my toe, blood and skin, on a small gap in the floorboards. I managed to keep my spicy comment to a low intelligible groan. That was 100% NOT the first time the Universe has corrected my nasty behaviour within minutes. “You yell at your kids, I take a toe “ was the message. I remember spending an entire day once thinking about myself - my clothes, my hair, fluffing pillows in my living room, indulging in a hot bath, thinking about my evening cocktail and then ... finding myself in a little fender bender on a very routine drive home. There may also have been a time when I engaged in some gentle boasting to co-workers, who had made it clear to me they had no plans for the long weekend, that my schedule for the upcoming break was packed with boat loads of salty food, fun, skiing, and crackling fires only to break my knee in two places before noon the next day. Then there was the time I spent an afternoon ignoring my real responsibilities to frivolously shop for things to decorate my little cottage with. Later that evening, as I was patting myself on the back and saying “Eat lead paint Joanna Gaines, you got nothin’ on me!”, I sliced my head open on the one and only sharp spot on the gnarly old metal staircase. As the warm blood dripped down my forehead straight into my dumbfounded expression, I remember thinking, “the Universe is completely incapable of looking the other bloody way when I’m behaving badly and it’s really starting to piss me off”.

Hubris? Karma? The coincidence of continually receiving small life beatings every time I’m not putting my best foot forward is starting to feel a bit too ominous. I’m not talking about religion and consequence and the afterlife. Religion is the mama and papa of parenting in this life for some people. I’m talking more about your everyday, in-your-face, mean-but-justified babysitter named Karma, also referred to as the Universe sometimes. Not the multi-layered workings of Buddhist Karma. More of the “I see you” kind of Karma. An energy that is palpable.

It’s no secret anymore, or at least it isn’t to me, that there is an energy to life. You feel an energy when someone touches you, a void of energy when someone passes away, a jolt of energy when someone is afraid and a need for energy when there has been nothing but rain. Nikola Tesla said that “sun maintains all human life and supplies all human energy”. He believed in natural energy and that nothing needed to be manufactured. As of 2009, Zhong Lin Wang of the University of Georgia is working on power generating polymer fibres that could be implanted into the body to harness energy from the mundane dilation of blood vessels. This could capture enough energy to power small medical devices. No batteries, no electricity. MIT researcher David Cohen in 1972 was able to measure magnetic fields around the head that correlated to brain activity. Makes you wonder about the old adage ‘Happy is a decision’. If we decide to be happy, does this actually create a positive energy around the outside of our bodies, more specifically our heads? Like an old fashioned biblical halo. When you see someone across a room at a party that you are drawn to, often it is not the most beautiful person in the room but the most magnetic. Occasionally it’s just the one with the best hair but usually, it’s that truly radiant person.

The Universe, both physical and spiritual, could be taking stock of my energy and my actions and deciding when and how to chat with me. Charlie Chaplin and I agree, when you smile at someone they smile back. Your energy in that moment manifests as a smile and it creates positive energy and even a positive reaction. Perhaps my intentions create energy too and when they are less than admirable, the Universe decides it’s ok to give me a Karmic zap. “You can’t find the time to make something for the bake sale to support a refugee family? Then your husband can’t find that bag of road salt to melt the patch of ice forming right outside your car door.” Positive begets positive, negative begets life’s little lessons, or natural consequences. That thing we are so afraid of letting our children experience so we surround them in life-deflecting teflon.

I’m no Macbeth but will admit to having had moments of being overly confident, possibly pretentious and certainly self-absorbed. Guilty guilty guilty. I believe in fate to a degree but don’t necessarily think it’s the only motherboard driving my metaphysical mini-van. I don’t think that it is only my sins of the past that have landed me here or that my destiny is predetermined. I still believe I can impact my life. Even though I have to acknowledge some things do appear meant-to-be at times. This hubris of mine, this excessive pride and notion that I can steer my own life boat is albeit void of a conscience at times and that’s when I have noticed the ‘Universe’ stepping in to smack me back to goodness. I am grateful that I have what seems to be the ability to read these signs and notice when I have received a spiritual spanking. ‘Okay okay, I know you’re there. I can be better.’

You screw people over, be prepared to bend over yourself. That’s what life has led me to believe. For every furniture store I have ever tried to get free delivery out of at the expense of some poor sales person’s commission, IKEA has exacted revenge on their behalf by making me waste my precious breathing moments putting together furniture made with parts that exist nowhere else on the planet and always, always come up one piece short of a dresser. You don’t think that’s the Universe getting us all back? We’re in that one together.

In so much as I start to get annoyed with the energy, the Universe, whatever you want to call it, not being able to back off and give me a freaking break sometimes, I can only imagine the feeling is mutual. If I were an animator, I could imagine a cartoon Buddha-like being sitting somewhere fluffy and ethereal, looking down, up, or sideways at me, watching me stuff my packaged goods into irresponsible plastic bags, seeing me turn my nose up at the safe injection site going up in my neighborhood or ignoring the Salvation Army bucket and saying to me, ‘seriously Sloan, you can’t give something back today? That hurricane didn’t even come near your part of the world, I’ve never once let you go hungry, I didn’t let you fall down the stairs when you were texting, get hit by a car, or let your child get lost or sick today so, the least you can do is one selfless little thing today, just one thing to acknowledge your part in this machine’.

This machine. Machines typically run on fuel. It’s as if the world were an old fashioned washing machine and we all have to keep the water moving together. If the water is moving, the soap is activated and grows some fabulous big bubbles that clean and rejuvenate. We have to reach out, get in elbow deep, swirl that water around, give our energy or the water might stop moving, grow brown, stagnate, lose those fluffy bubbles and then nothing happens, or worse, mold, decay and sludge. The more energy we all put into swishing this water and keeping the bubbles, the more we all benefit. Keep those whites white.

Your energy is yours to control. We know from the success of cognitive behavior therapy that we can control our thoughts. Those thoughts come from our brains. Our brains create that electromagnetic energy around our heads, that halo you might not see but others can feel. Dr. Deepak Chopra has argued that emotional energy has a clear impact on our physical body. He teaches people to recognize this energy as interacting with the energy of others and the physical world and to let go of living as “I’ or “me” and see the interconnectedness. Scientists claim only to have mapped 4% of the actual Universe, stars, planets etc. The rest is referred to as dark energy. We have much to learn about energy in general so it seems logical to start with our own.

I won’t pretend to know the ‘why’ of all the major circumstances of the world but I can try to be obedient to my own situation. Maybe instead of film festivals, comic book conventions, and Shakespeare in the Park, we need KarmaCon. A place to go and be reminded of and learn about the human energy we have, the electromagnetic impulses radiated by our behaviour, the impact we can have on others and to reinforce the notion that we should give what we are very likely to get back. Swish those bubbles or you’ll get a wave of dank swamp water over your head. The ‘Mi Casa Su Casa’ of Karma is ‘My Problems Are Your Problems’. Get your conscience wherever you see it on sale, but mark my words, get one. The Universe isn’t messing around. Just ask Kevin Spacey. See the good and be the good. I have a lot of work to do and that scar on my toe reminds me every day. It’s the little things that make a difference. And the little toe that never lets you forget.

C. Sloan

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