While I don’t believe in karma, the way it is spoken of across social media seems also similarly one-eyed as I wrote yesterday in the post about forgiveness. I’ve seen people joke that they must’ve been bad in their past life to deserve their circumstances in this… But mainly people seem to use it as a means to wish harm or punishment wherever they’ve seen bad behaviour.
I think at the heart of this is a kind of desire for justice to be done but it also indicates a kind of Teflon attitude about our own wrong doings. This post is not really about karma as a topic. It’s about one-eyed-ness.
When our middle son was in year 5, his teacher caught up with me in the afternoon to say our boy had “done a great social justice thing” in class that day.
What he told me helped put another even older inconsistency that bothered me into perspective. It always bugged me when parents spoke of their child having a “strong sense of justice”. It always seemed to me that this was only applied when their own child had been wronged and had something of a meltdown over it. This is not a strong sense of justice. Not really.
A view of justice is more rounded than that.
Back to the classroom.
That day, Carey aged about 10, had asked to speak to his class. He was not extroverted (then) but something had got under his skin.
He stood and addressed the class on the fact that some kids within it were treating other kids really badly. He himself was not on the rough end of the treatment but he was incensed that he’d seen bigger boys shoving smaller boys into walls and poles, running away laughing leaving other kids hurt. He told the class he’d seen it, it wasn’t right and it must stop. I don’t think he named them to the class but he knew it was a bigger problem than just the specific instances he saw.
Golly gosh I was proud of him. (Still am)
But this is what settled the idea for me on what a strong sense of justice is.
Justice cares about the wrongs done to others – not just self.
Justice sees its own wrong doings and takes ownership.
No Teflon in sight.