Not Your Karma
Someone reminded me the other day that it is not our job to rescue people from experiencing their karma — not even those who love us or who were supposed to love us. It can be painful to watch their karmic IOU coming due. That’s “I owe (the) Universe.” It can confuse us into believing we caused the inevitable reckoning for their amassed deeds. Kindness sometimes looks like reminding ourselves, and maybe even them, of any deeds that have been entered on the good side of their ledger.
People readily and often lob the words “It’s not all about you” at us when they want everything to be about them, when they want us to bypass our own needs in favor of theirs. This is rarely overtly stated but definitely implied through their behaviors. These expectations may even be offered as an opportunity for us to help them get paid back for what they feel they have been cheated out of in their lives. All we have to do, according to their expectations, is to do nothing for ourselves. Not give any thought or action towards bettering our own situation. Instead we are expected to put all of our thoughts and deeds toward their goal, whether that be to raise themselves up by virtue of our adoration or loyalty, or for our acts of subservience to brand us as being beneath them and thus elevating them in comparison.
Some demand these behaviors from us in what appears to be a nonthinking, autopilot kind of way. Others are on an obvious quest to acquire the love they themselves have never, or feel they have never, been shown. Some had childhoods void of healthy relationship models. Still others don’t care about anyone other than themselves. They offer only indentured servitude with no terms for release. If that is the case — run. Don’t look back. Each of these groups dangles a carrot of eventual acceptance. How heady to receive approval from the one who has been withholding it from you.
But don’t confuse their potential, and most likely mythical, acceptance with the acceptance someone from your past denied you. They are not them. This is not that. Your, or anyone else’s, unhealthy loyalty cannot save them. Your existence does not require their approval. There is no need for anyone to redeem you.
