Karma is hard to disbelieve. It seems so obviously true. Of all the irrational mystical, religious, and superstitious beliefs, it’s the one most susceptible confirmation bias. Karma loves to arrive with a good dose of irony. Karma seems to have a sense of humour. Karma begs us to be smug. Like believing that bad people will go to hell and good people go to heaven, karma is comforting. A belief in karma is hard to shake. Nevertheless, I don’t believe. At least not on the rational level. On the emotional level, that’s another issue entirely.

Take the situation with my sisters second, or was it her third, husband. Let’s call him Joe because that was his name. He was abusive toward my sister, and was sexually molesting their daughter, according to my mother who had an instinct for such things. My father tried to intervene during an incident with my sister. Joe knocked my father down and kicked him in the small of his back, right above the kidneys.

My father never had another comfortable night in a bed, but spent his nights in a Lazyboy chair. At least he did until the cancer gave him access to morphine. And then he died.

Joe walked about town with a bible under his arm, proudly proclaiming that he was born again. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. And then he also died – of a kidney infection that caused him excruciating pain in exactly the spot on his back where he had kicked my father.

Here’s the thing: HE DIED ON MY MOTHER’S BIRTHDAY.

Now that is karma writ large. How could I not believe in karma with an example like that in my own life.

And yet I stubbornly refuse to believe. It’s just a wonderful coincidence. And that’s all.