Coincidences and Consequences
Ring, Ring
Sometimes we receive reminders from the universe that we are on the right path. The universe called this week.
Was it karma, coincidence, or confirmation bias? Not sure. We humans tend to lean too hard into the mystical ways life plays out sometimes, creating a bias to what we want to see and hear.
Wikipedia defines confirmation bias as “the tendency of people to favor information that confirms or strengthens their beliefs or values and is difficult to dislodge once affirmed”.
You might think you have a lucky shirt because you remember good things happened when you wore it … but ignore the times when things went badly or meh. I have written, and will be writing more, about karma and schadenfreude here.
So … rambling … back to that knock on the door from the universe …
Knock, Knock
I had been discouraged that all this writing, all this sharing, all this hand-wringing, wasn’t showing any visible signs of progress, no tangible “saves“. It had gained some traction and more and more people were reading it, but I didn’t really see the effect. Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe I don’t need to know. What was I expecting?
In the end, the news this week wasn’t some mystical sign from the universe after all. The news wasn’t from some carefully curated path, nor some string of karmic coincidences, retraced backwards to a single point for an “Aha!” moment. It was distantly related to my actions but none that I was even aware of.
It was simply an acknowledgement that this writing work is important and it helped. It was an indicator that the really difficult early days of reporting, giving testimony and statements, the pre-trails, and the trial itself made an impact on at least one person those twelve or thirteen odd years ago.
We can forget sometimes that there are a myriad of characters that are part of our stories, some that guide us and some we may not even know. For all the efforts made to steer life in a positive direction, it was a random sequence of events that I knew nothing about, that could have gone in several directions, but went one way. It was life playing out as intended, and people played their parts, and some rose to the occasion to be good people. Which is all anyone can really expect or hope for.
And it made me smile.
It was enough to inspire me to keep writing. To finish those half-started posts from two years ago. To keep putting it back into the universe. Not saying that one shouldn’t put effort into anything; don’t blindly trust that the world will happen to you. That’s kooky.
The Take-Away For You
Keep doing your work, not the perp’s. Benefits might not flow directly to you, it’s not a gumball machine. And they might not be immediate. Keep doing your writing, your talking, your therapy, your me-time, your thinking. Your living. For sure they are not thinking about you, so don’t allow them live rent-free in your head anymore.
Keep doing the work and the benefits will follow.
That’s a universal truth and a truth of the universe.
The Con’s Sequence
Putting a cap on this ramble and the week, I love storytelling enough to try writing them badly. But today, in my fog, I asked ChatGPT to help me name those idioms that people say in relation to consequences and karma. I thought I would get three or four examples.
The robot overlords gave me more than 20 and they are brilliant.
Whether karma, coincidence, or consequences, as survivors, sometimes these universal truths are all we can hope for. For your consideration:
You reap what you sow.
What goes around comes around.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
You’ve made your own bed, now you must lie in it.
You’ve made your own bed of nails.
You can’t un-ring a bell.
The horse has left the barn
You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube.
If you play with fire, you’re going to be burned.
You’ve dug your own grave.
You’ve burnt your bridges.
You’ve painted yourself into a corner.
You’ve shot yourself in the foot.
You’ve paved your own path.
You pulled the trigger.
You put the arrow on the bow.
You’ve made your own mess.
You’ve cooked your own goose.
You’ve made your own luck.
You’ve thrown the boomerang.
You’ve set the stage, now play the role.
You’ve dug your own pit.
You’ve woven your own web.
You’ve forged your own chains.
You’ve tied your own noose.
You’ve thrown the dice, now see where they land.
The chickens have come home to roost.
Bawk, bawk.
Domino photo by Bradyn Trollip, on Unsplash. Shelf photo by Cristofer Maximilian, on Unsplash