DOES KARMA TRULY EXIST?

Let’s talk about forgiveness.

We cling to the concept of karma because it functions as a form of check and balance accounting. It is a comforting ledger that promises equilibrium: do good, and the universe will reward you; do bad, and the universe will eventually collect its debt. It is an incredibly seductive philosophy because it satisfies our primal need for justice.

We want to believe that the universe possesses a moral consciousness, that it observes our pain and actively plots the downfall of those who caused it. We sit in the painful aftermath of being wronged, holding our breath, waiting for the sky to fall on the people who did us dirty.

We watch their lives from a distance, anticipating the inevitable car crash, the financial ruin, or the relational heartbreak that will finally balance the scales.

But if you look at the world with clear eyes, you quickly realize that karma does not exist. At least, not in the satisfying way people like to imagine it.

Karma originates from ancient Indian philosophical and religious traditions, specifically within Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. In its original context, karma was never meant to be a swift, earthly retail system where a bad deed today results in a flat tire tomorrow. It was intimately tied to reincarnation - the belief that the soul carries the moral weight of its actions across multiple lifetimes, slowly refining itself over cycles of rebirth.

Yet, Western culture has stripped the word of its spiritual depth, flattening it into a superficial catchphrase that we use to comfort ourselves when we feel powerless. We have turned it into a weapon of wishful thinking, a spiritualized version of revenge. And while I don’t necessarily believe in the concept of reincarnation, I also do not think that karma in the way that we believe it, exists.

I know that is an uncomfortable thing to say because most of us want to believe the universe keeps perfect records. We want to believe that every betrayal is eventually returned to sender.

The danger of believing in this earthly version of karma is the inevitable disillusionment that follows. Think about the times someone broke your heart, lied to your face, or sabotaged your efforts. You wished them the absolute worst. You expected the universe to vindicate you, to deliver a poetic comeuppance that would prove you were right and they were wrong.

But instead, you watched them prosper. You discovered that they got the promotion, they married the beautiful partner, they bought the house, and they are currently thriving entirely against your will. There was no thunder to fire them. They are happy, healthy, and completely unbothered by the wreckage they left behind in your life.

And if we are honest, there is a unique kind of frustration that comes from watching someone prosper after they broke your heart. It feels unfair because it is unfair. That is the part many people struggle to accept. Life is not always just.

It is a profound, bitter pill to swallow: bad things will not ultimately happen to all the people who did you bad. The wicked do not always fall. The cruel frequently win, the selfish accumulate wealth, and the liars often die peacefully in their sleep surrounded by luxury.

If we tie our peace of mind to the expectation of their downfall, we condemn ourselves to a lifetime of perpetual bitterness. We remain trapped in a prison of our own making, waiting for a verdict from a court that is not in session.

Because if your healing requires the destruction of the person who hurt you, then your peace will always remain tied to their life.

What if they never apologize? What if they never acknowledge what they did?
What if they move on happily while you are still trying to gather yourself?
What if life never produces the cinematic revenge you imagined?

Then what?

Will you suspend your healing indefinitely waiting for someone else to suffer?

And this is not me saying accountability does not matter. It absolutely does. I’m a big believer in “play stupid games, win stupid prizes”

Actions have consequences and sometimes forgiveness requires distance. But ultimately, forgiveness is release. In reality, revenge rarely heals people the way they imagine it will. Pain is not transactional like that.

Their suffering cannot undo yours.

This is your reminder to unclench. It is time to release the people you have held hostage in your heart, because the truth is, you aren’t actually holding them hostage, you are holding yourself.

When we refuse to let go of the wrongs done to us, we are drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

They are out in the world living freely, while we are bound to the memory of their offense, keeping tabs on a ledger that the universe has no intention of balancing. We treat our anger like a vigilante guard, believing that if we stay angry enough, we can force justice into existence.

But our fury has no jurisdiction over their reality. Your resentment cannot halt their prosperity, and your tears cannot manufacture their ruin.

Forgiveness is a hard, grueling thing, but it is ultimately a necessary thing. It is frequently misunderstood as an act of weakness, a white flag that suggests what they did was acceptable, or a forced reconciliation that requires you to invite harmful people back into your space. It is none of those things.

Forgiveness is not a favor you perform for the person who hurt you; it is a fierce, deliberate act of self-preservation.

It is the moment you look at the unpayable debt someone owes you and decide to write it off, not because they deserve to be absolved, but because you deserve to be free.

To forgive is to accept the devastating truth that the earthly scales may never be balanced in your sight. It is the willingness to fold up the ledger, close the books, and stop looking at the horizon for a storm that may never come to their shores. It requires an agonizing surrender of your desire for an acceptable ending.

But on the other side of that surrender is the only genuine peace available to us. We release them from our hearts not because karma will get them later, but because we refuse to let their ghost occupy any more of our futures.

Sometimes the only way to stop bleeding from an old wound is to finally stop touching it.

And finally, the logic of grace demands a symmetry we often try to resist. When we examine the happenings of our own lives, we are forced to admit that we are not merely victims of a broken world; we are active participants in its fracturing. We have all been the villain in someone else’s story. We have lied, we have stayed silent when we should have spoken, and we have taken more than we gave.

Yet, we walk through the world draped in the unmerited mercy of a God who forgives us daily, completely and without reservation. Having been forgiven so much, who are we to withhold this same forgiveness from others?

To receive boundless grace with one hand while locking our debtors in a cage with the other is a profound moral hypocrisy.

We do not extend forgiveness because the person who wronged us has earned it; we extend it because we recognize that we, too, are desperately dependent on a debt we could never afford to clear ourselves.

All my love,

Oreva.