*Karma is a bitch*

This popular phrase, to my mind, is one of the most misleading lines of all time. I don't believe in karma (the effects of ones action that determine his destiny) and I think it only exists in the imagination of those who believe in its efficacy.

Terrible things happen to both good and bad people. So, it's a problem to me when we begin to relate the suffering of a supposedly bad person to 'karma hitting back'. You see a 70+ year old, who lived a terrible life of some sort, suffering from cancer or some other terminal illness and you say 'karma is a bitch', forgetting that very good people have died from cancer at less than 40. What was hitting back at those ones?

I give you an example, and sorry its closer home. My mom suffered from a debilitating illness for over 15yrs before it killed her. She was just 48yrs. I remember at her burial, two women walked up to me with materials in their hands and told me she gave it to them on her last visit to the village. They said they were yet to even sew them before they heard about her painful passing. They wept profusely and held me tightly for several minutes. To them, and indeed many others, she was a Tabitha. I can't really remember that wicked act of hers that would have warranted that suffering from ill health culminating to her death at a relatively young age. Could karma explain this?

Several people, our leaders particularly, have done despicable things, some have even killed. Yet you see them live longer than the average Nigerian, enjoying their ill gotten wealth in the process. At close to 80, you hear they have some form of sickness and we begin to shout 'karma'. Do we seriously expect people of that age not to be sick? Don't we have good younger people suffering from same?

I think the earlier we learn to understand that we all have our different destinies and should live and look up to what fate has in store for us, the better. It is a lie to believe that karma will pay people back for what wrong they have committed when those people may likely end up living more prosperous and fulfilling lives than you, the supposedly good ones.

Life itself is the bitch, not karma.



*Tough life from infancy*