Sometimes Karma takes too long, give it a little push

So your ex did you dirty. Your former lover, best friend and partner, with whom you swore to brave the winter, and who was the first person you took home that your father did not threaten to strangle, turned out not to be the angel you thought they were. Everyone has that ex who came straight from hell. On our good days, we wish them nothing but pain, KRA penalties and anal warts.

And on our bad days, we wish them a long, drawn-out death, possibly at the hands of an angry, horny lion. But because we are human after all, we split the difference and commit them to that strange and mighty deity known as karma. Karma will get them, we say, to calm our spirit. They will get theirs. Maybe not today. Maybe not in five years. Maybe not in this lifetime. But karma will cash that cheque in at one point or another, and they will rue the day they treated you like a doormat. It would be a good thing if this shoulder shrug indicated a surrendering of negative emotions in favour of a more zen life. If it was an acknowledgement of things beyond our control, a washing of one’s hands, as it were. Like refusing to share mental space with the person who terrorised your heart on principle. In reality, though, the thinking is pegged on a misguided reliance on the moral judgment of the universe. We have a way of centring ourselves in the random happenings of the cosmos.

So we believe there is someone up in the sky looking down on our lives, nodding and shaking their heads at the drama in our world as it unfolds. When we are wronged, that deity sets in motion a course of events to avenge us. A practical person would point out that if karma were a singular entity or even a corporation dedicated to meting out justice, it or they would have to keep track of a million grudges. And then there’s the business of following up and following through. Not to mention the creativity needed to come up with a million ways to ‘finish’ someone. Who has that kind of time in this economy? No wonder some cases slip through the cracks.

There is also the assumption that yours was not a standard, boring relationship. Why assume that you qualify for karmic vengeance with your run-of-the-mill infidelity scandals? Do you ever think there is a minimum entry requirement, and your ex being shitty simply does not cut it?

It is why I understand exes who scorch the earth. Those ones who scrape the paintjob off the new car. The ones who rip every item of clothing in the closet into pieces.I understand when an ex goes on the rampage, tearing through their former person’s friend group and leaving their BFFs with unshakeable, mutated strains of gonorrhoea.At least those ones have taken matters into their own hands. At least they are not sitting on their hands, humming, “It is well with my soul” and wondering how to turn the other cheek just like Christ said we should.

Karma is not lurking around the corner, waiting to stick out a foot and trip your ex up. Karma is not hiding in chicken bones, waiting to lodge in their throat and choke them to death. Karma is not keeping one eye on the future lineage of your ex, waiting to inject a little cancer into the gene pool. Handle your own issues. Hold that grudge like an adult. Block them. Put up posters with their number as Mganga Shupavu. Forward the texts his side-piece sent to you to his mother. Do something, and do it yourself. It’s a far healthier alternative than praying for their downfall.