Some people call it karma. the simple idea that the good and evil you work in the world will come back to you. Some people believe that it will come back to you in some greater multiple. I'm not really sure what to think about it in general, the whole thing sounds sort of superstitious to me.

But regardless if there is an unseen balancing of human accounts, does it really make a difference? In the first place can anyone really avoid doing evil? Even if one tries to be good, the actions might have unforseen repurcussions that cause trouble for someone else somewhere else that we can't see (butterfly flaps it's wings and causes a hurricane). So in the end is there really a purpose in trying to be good? Well of course there is, it should just be done with the understanding that good and evil are permeable concepts rather than the absolutes that we are so often led to believe that they are. What is good and evil changes from culture to culture. I like to eat beef, but if I were Hindu I would consider the practice barbaric. But "ah" one says "what about murder?" but "ah-ha" I say "what about cannibals?" For every example you will find of an absolute moral truth there is an exception.

So why try? Because we have to do something. The world turns and the one universal truth in it seems to be pain and misery. I've seen some of it myself, far less than some, more than others. But I take my licks because they are part of being alive. I also take them because I deserve them. I don't deserve them as repayment for evil actions or good gone awry. I deserve karmic punishment because in the end it helps to make me a better person. I think back on the pain of the last two years and know that I deserved it. I failed and got the just reward. I had not the sense or ambition to carry through with the wonderful opportunities that made themselves available to me, and for that I fell from the trumped up state of grace in which I lived at the time. Everything that has happened since the fall I also deserved. Part of my punishment resides in the ever present knowledge that things will never be the way they were. I accept this and do my best to move on. Lingering in the past is the best way to lose track of one's present actions, and thus unintentionally add to the evil that floats around us. So I watch where my feet are going with an occasional glance upward and outward, and sometimes I'm lucky enough to spot spare change on the ground.

Rereading this, I realize that it's a bit scattered. It covers some things that I told myself I wouldn't rehash. But it is the truth as I can tell it now. I only wish I could be more clear, and get to the core of things.

Ah well.

Strong as steel, rusting in the weather
Iron