Karma II

I am a believer in Karma.  Your actions and words will always carry the weight of consequence for you.

I am also a firm believer that there are things and people I cannot make better by extending myself to them.  In order for me to reach out to you, you have got to be able to reach back in a meaningful way.  Reaching out to someone implies that you are attempting to connect with them.  Connecting to people is as simple as a smile or word that leaves a door open for that person to try and get to know you.

There is a subset of people you will reach out to that are huge mistakes.  When you peel back the onion, you will occasionally not find the beautiful human you expected, you will find a person with significant personal  deficits that should never be part of your life.  It seems like almost simultaneously when you are finding how much they do not belong in your life -  they will find a pressing need to become part of your life.  

There are connections that should be broken, doors that should be closed, and times when you need to have people get out of your life, who are starting to suck the life out of you.  From a Karma standpoint you only owe these people the honesty of clearly stepping away from them.  

Most people know when you are clearly stepping away from them.  For them not to acknowledge that you are stepping away is a form of manipulation they use to keep in contact with you.   Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to be firm and honest. 

There are people in my life who I thought would be good or casual friends that were train wrecks.  They had to go through their own journey to find their own self worth.  These journeys frequently involved a series of destructive behaviors that involved bad relationships, drug and alcohol abuse and bad personal decisions.  I would have not helped them or me to have been a witness to that journey. 

So use your good deeds at a time, a place, and  a person where they will find some purchase.  Never dump your good deeds into the black hole of someone else's destructive behavior.