Mental note; do not mess with Wayne.

BTW, thanks for being one of the good guys !

Re: Wayne's thoughts on Karma...
 

Yes.

This is, as dd74 explained, schdenfreude - "taking pleasure from the misfortune of others". It is not karma. Your questioning of this experience and willingness to examine it IS karma.

Karma is not about retribution, vengeance, punishment or reward; karma simply deals with what is. The effects of all deeds actively create past, present and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one's own life, and the pain and joy it brings to others. It is cumulative. The essential part, IMO, is being cumulatively responsible for one's life. AND ACTING ON THAT KNOWLEDGE.

You've given us a lot, Wayne. Good karma to you...

I wish ill will on no one. To do so would negate my basic premise that we are all capable of doing things that hurt each other. THe trick is to learn how to forgive....not forget, but learn from the experience.

A much wiser friend once told me that the most important lesson we can learn is to learn from our experiences not to repeat the actions that have hurt you when you deal with others.

I think I pissed karma off permanently. I don't know how or why, but I seem to have a black cloud over my head 24/7 and tonight is one heck of a thunder storm.

part of it is your own doing...if you think you have a black cloud
over your head all the time, it becomes part of your belief structure
internally, and you become a walking self fulfilling prophecy of doom.
not very pleasant way to live.

you seem like a very fun loving person who has experienced things
that the common person does not experience, slodave...

perhaps you are just being too hard on yourself and expecting too much.
is there anything creative that you do or can do to take your mind
off of this?

Heh, I really hope I did not cause this, but one of my birds just died. He was fine earlier today, but then around ten tonight, he stumbled and seemed to be breathing heavier. I put him in his cage and a short while later, he fell off. I then kept him on the couch with me and he started to move. I kept him on my chest, his breathing became very rapid and he was convulsing. I took him into the bath room for light and he died a few minutes later. I don't really care to discuss what happened earlier (non bird related).

I feel so bad for my other bird. They were best friends. Skyler seems to know what happened to Joey, but I have no idea how he will be later today, when he is uncovered.

Dave

I think Karma is part of the natural world. You can not create or destroy matter, only change its state, no up without down, no life without death, it's a balance thing.

I think the natural world tries to maintian equalibrium.

Wayne, while you think your daughter may have been a bit of bad karma for you it was good karma for her to be born into a loving family who will nurture and cherish her and give her every opportunity imaginable. For her it could have been worse.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Saw a brief news clip of how Chinese housewives are forming "buying clubs" locally- for the purpose of making bulk purchases.
They all order a bulk lot of "proven" goods, and save.
I'm sure there are probably different clubs for each spectrum of commerce, but the point is they develop relationships and reputations so that everyone benefits.

If the clubs are managed right, the really bad producers find those local markets unacessable.
Considering the small Pcar world, it's suprising even some shysters are still "California proven" after all these years.....

Sorry to hear about the loss of your bird, Dave. We lost our cocketiel Hoppi after 18 years of happy chirping last winter. Sad day.
I believe in the karma thing to a degree, life is something beyond an accounting of pluses and minuses, it is not mathematical at all if you have enough time to reflect on all of it. One of the John Lennon songs had a line, "the amount of love you take is equal to the love you make". If you go through life living the golden rule, even if things go bad(they seem to eventually, like Wayne says) you hopefully have developed enough keel to keep things in perspective and hope for a better day or outcome seems like a sure thing. Some events that at first seem to be terrible sometimes have very surprising, positive outcomes in the end.
I have seen plenty of bad acts in my day, and most of them end up alone in some sense, which may be the worst outcome of all. Glenn

The last line of "The End" off of Abbey Road.
"and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make"

It was Paul McCartney who actually wrote and sung that.

and a little more here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_%28The_Beatles_song%29