Karma And Comeuppance: How Do You Feel When What Goes Around Comes Around?

Most people I know believe that what goes around comes around where I stay on the fence.  I think they’re probably right but I try to base things on my personal experience and I just don’t have enough evidence. I can’t even say that I hope what goes around comes around because I have seen people do such horrible things, it’s scares me to think what they may be facing down the line.

Now recently I learned that someone who did me really down and dirty a number of years ago was hit by devastating bill. It’s $100,000 bill that they MUST pay and I didn’t even bother to process this or think about it for more than a year. But eventually it hit me and I called, Annalisa.

I called her because I knew she would be gleeful over this. She thought the person, “evil” and Annalisa LOVES to see someone get their comeuppance. I mean she LOVES it.

“This is going to make your day,” I said when she picked up. “I know this will make you stupendously happy, guess what happened to this person…”

It did make her day. She said it was the best news ever and when I hung up I wondered how come I didn’t feel the same or similar.

I asked my husband about this and he doesn’t know. I thought about it on my own and can tell you I don’t think it is because I am high-minded or transcendent or some damned thing. It’s more like I am missing a lobe of my brain so I called, Annalisa back today with more questions.

First she affirmed that news like it does in fact feel her with glee. GLEE!  In contrast it fills me with nothing. NOTHING.  She laid out her reasoning on the topic and it was all sound. I don’t have any reasoning, just this remark:  I can’t see how something bad happening to someone affects me or benefits me in any way.

I did say I think it is fine if someone gets what they have coming but it is also fine if they don’t. I can accept either situation and see no use or value in concerning myself with it, regardless.

Let’s say there just happens to be some people out there who are truly bulletproof. Does this matter to me? It does not. I can allow for that in my paradigm because I just don’t think it matters. It is like someone being richer than me or better looking than me. This stuff doesn’t bother me because it’s pointless. If you can get away with murder and I can’t, so what?

This universe can most definitely deliver outrageous punishment, masterfully designed down to the minute detail. I’ve seen it and I have experienced it myself. I have also been given a pass on a number of occasions which I may or may not have deserved but what I have never felt is satisfaction when someone gets what they deserve and I don’t know why.

What are your feelings or experiences around the concept of comeuppance. Is it universal?  Wishful thinking? What?

35 thoughts on “Karma And Comeuppance: How Do You Feel When What Goes Around Comes Around?”

  1. I tend to think things are more random. I’ve seen crappy people prevail but I haven’t followed them the rest of their lives or seen ALL their lives so…. But I don’t think reward/punishment is delivered in equal measure or to all who deserve.

  2. I’m in agreement with moonpluto, but I am also in agreement with Annalisa. If someone who wronged me or my kids gets their comeuppance, I’m loving it. It renews my faith in what goes around comes around.

  3. Argh…I meant to add that living in a town so small they gossip over morning coffee about what time the neighbor flushed the toilet the night before, I do see or know about it when it happens up here, even if I have nothing to do with the person.

  4. probably mars in libra and knowing intuitively that you’d have to balance out your feelings, sometimes it’s faster & easier to not have any feelings to balance. I truly believe in karma but know that I have no say in what – or when – so can’t get real excited about it either way.

  5. i tend to feel sadness when I hear someone got a raw deal, no matter who it is or what they’ve done to me. It does not feel good to me to watch anyone else suffer.

  6. Yeah but what if it is not a raw deal? What if it is exactly what they deserve – obvious to see – it’s just that what they deserve happens to be devastating? In other words the person set themselves up… thought they were getting away / off scot free but it turns out otherwise.

  7. There are times where it is very satisfying. Most of the time though when someone wrongs me I drop them. I usually don’t hear news about them after that.

  8. when folk get a comeuppance, well to be truthful, I might have a primitive spark of, look what you did to yourself for a fleeting moment, but the overwhelming feeling is of sadness that they messed up their own and others’ lives in the first place.

  9. I can think of someone, from years ago, who deserves pretty fierce punishment. Would I be happy if I heard he got his? I don’t know if I’d feel delight at his suffering. It doesn’t solve anything or right the wrong or help me in any way. But then again, I think rapists and pedophiles shld have their hands cut off so …..

  10. @elsa
    Hi Elsa,

    I don’t know if I can say what someone else deserves. In my heart, I can’t know this, even though I may feel that I do. (But, in my heart, I know when I’ve done something.) But again, even if they did something to me or mine, What did I do to them in the first place to receive such treatment? Maybe I did nothing at all. Or could it be some kind of karmic justice? I don’t know, although when bad things “happen” to me, I sometimes think it is karma or some sort of payback for some wrong(s) I’ve done. And I’ve most def done some wrongs, even though my intentions were sometimes good. There are too many questions involved for me though still to know how it all works. How many here believe in karma?

    You live and learn. I’m concentrating hard now (at age 44) on the golden rule and practicing it consciously (most of the time, shooting for all of the time). It’s one of the few things that makes sense to me and for me even though it is not always easy to practice.

  11. I agree with you, Tamra. I don’t feel fit to judge in many cases because you never know the whole story.

    I really can resolve someone getting away with something inside myself because I have seen it happen (at least in the moment) and would just crack apart if I did not expand to include these situation.

    One of the stories I tell to illustrate this, I used to think very idealistically, that good guys always won and so forth. But then I was working with these cops and made some such statement and they straightened me out right away.

    They told me of a man who beat his wife all the time. She’d been hospitalized several times due his beatings but would never press charges and she did not leave.

    One day this man called them and told them to come get his wife, she’d fallen into the well. He say on the grass next to the well as they fetched her body. They said he was smiling and chewing on grass and there was nothing they could do. Hearing this story changed my paradigm.

    Now the people I know who believe in comeuppance, absolutely, would say this guy gets his, eventually but I don’t know because I’ve not seen it and this is why my position is what it is.

    As for “fault”, I agree with you that “blame” may be shared or whatever. In the case I cite, I do know the details and the person definitely owes the money and then some, I just still derive no satisfaction because that is one hell of a bill to be hit with a 60 years old which is what happened here. I mean if you have a lot of money then $100,000 is relative but in this case, it seems it would have hit the person very hard. They are greedy, so it is really a slam but I don’t know that for sure so it’s another reason to just suspend everything… judgment, etc.

    I really just don’t know if it all comes out or not but I do know I try to keep my nose as clean as I can… and it is still dirty by the way.

  12. I am exactly with you on this Elsa. I don’t know, people think it is because I’m nice, but I am not nice, I just don’t feel good when bad things happen, period. Even if they are absolutely deserved.

  13. A couple things:

    1 – if someone does me so horribly wrong, I amputate them. If I have amputated them, I am cold – I don’t care what happens, good or ill. I wouldn’t be happy if they got their due, or angry if they won the lotto.

    2 – it’s just not my place to judge – as you say, we often don’t know the whole story

  14. I think that to delight in someone else’s pain or struggle creates or even feeds a void or a dark area in your heart, your soul, whatever. We all know what it feels to suffer, so why wish it upon someone else, much less celebrate it?

    Karma isn’t some judge sitting above us saying, “you did this, so in turn, this will happen to you”. Karma is the equal reaction to any action. There’s no payback, there’s no “deserved punishment”, there’s no set time or place it will come to be. It will just be. If you believe in reincarnation, it may not even be in this lifetime.

    I personally don’t believe anyone should be punished by other people. It goes against what I believe all of us would do well to learn and practice, and that is unconditional love.

    There’s a quote that says “love me when I deserve it least, because that’s when I need it most”.

  15. I don’t believe in instant karma. I believe Karma is very old stuff. We probably don’t “pay” for what we’ve done in this life until we reincarnate. Maybe we’re drawn to a person and end up marrying them because we hurt them badly in a past carnation so now we are loving and taking care of them. Or maybe we took part in a mass killing and the next time around we’re blind. I believe karma has to do with what our soul needs for it’s development. Good or bad.

  16. I don’t like to see someone get a raw deal. But I know there are three people on this planet who have done (and/or my children) so horrendously wrong – based on GREED in all three cases – that whatever ill would befall them would create satisfaction for me.

    This is me, acknowledging my shadow.

    One, after putting me through complete hell several years ago, was amputated by me from my life. He screwed me over, I was paying his past due bills to keep a business going, and I walked. He showed up at my door, after coming down my driveway in the dark with his headlights off and “cop-banged” on my door. (He was a retired cop.) He showed up at my job where I was working alone and refused to leave. He stalked me.

    When he had a heart attack a few months later, I didn’t laugh, but I didn’t shed any tears for him, either. And it didn’t stop him stalking me. I am just relieved when he left the state! But one day, I’m gonna get on an airplane (he’s a “flight attendant” now…ROFLMAO) and he’s gonna have to take care of me. And I will RELISH it while he’s choking on it.

  17. No no no, Elsa!!! It’s a fine analogy, and if people think it’s weird, they aren’t seeing the same world I am. I think it sums up what’s going on pretty damned well.

    When that hit the inbox this morning, it was like light in dark corners for me. I’ve been struggling all week, and you nailed it.

  18. I believe in karma and probably tend more towards Annalisa than you. I don’t actively wish that people that have done wrong things to me have equally unpleasant things happen to them…but..I’ve seen it happen over and over again. And to myself included. I’ve actually had times where things happened to me and I thought..well, thats my karma for doing _____. It probably also relates to my Baptist bible school teaching about do unto others…I believe in good karma too..so all the good deeds are rewarded too. Yeah, I’d feel gleeful but at the same time knocking on wood…karma is a beeatch.

  19. I believe in karma from past lives. Or at least karma from somewhere else besides just what you do here. There’s too much that’s outside of your control — how you were raised, whether you were born whole, whether you have high or low self-esteem….born rich or born poor, born a poor american or a rich american or a rich saudi or a poor tibetan. We probably think the whole Taliban is going to hell but that’s certainly not what they think. Everybody thinks everybody else is Satan. It’s too random to be predicated on cause and effect in this lifetime. I think that story comforts us though and gives us a sense of justice.

    There’s also what you do, and what you get away with. Some people get away with horrific crimes and no one says a word ever; some people do anti-social thing and get burned at the stake. There has to be some karmic reason for that kind of scapegoating that comes from somewhere other than just this life.

  20. For myself, I’ve had to put my belief in karma to work, in order to be able to avoid falling into the trap of vengeance and anger, anger that would have totally consumed me. 9 years ago, “dear friends” conned me out of a HUGE amount of money, and then left me, figuratively, broken in the dust. They even managed to convince others of my evil and wrongdoing, the same others who had told me not to listen to my gut when I started feeling something was “off”. (Acknowledge the lesson here!) Anyway, for me I had to decide that “vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord” meant just that–leave it over to the universe to deal with them, because if I hadn’t, then not only would they have stolen all my money, they would have also stolen my soul, and I would/could not allow that. There is far too much vengeance in this world–people have been holding onto old hurts and hatreds for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and somehow, some way, that has to stop, and for myself, I was willing to let that stop with me.
    That being said, should I hear of their comeuppance, I will relish it, even rejoice.

  21. It depends on whether the comeuppance is proportionate and fitting. I like to feel they are standing in the shoes of the one they’ve hurt, that an epiphany is coming. They need to understand what they’ve done and the effects of it from the victims point of view. I don’t exactly satisfaction, but I do feel closure.

    Some of my relationships have been extremely karmic. I had someone move in with me and have to adjust to my household, then when we split up I was the one adjusting to someone elses house. It showed me both viewpoints from the perspective of someone making room (in all ways) and of someone trying to fit themselves in. And I was completely aware of the lesson.

  22. It does not make you happy to see someone suffer, even if he’s the worst person alive. It just gives you the impression that there is some kind of balance in the universe, that bad deeds don’t go unpunished and that there is a higher power to whom we are all accountable. It also makes you hope that in a similar fashion, good actions will be returned to you and that gives comfort.

    (that’s a Scorpio explanation)

  23. I dont think I would feel happy about someone else’s suffering even if they are extremely guilty. But I do wish every wrongdoer at some point feel great regret and understand the effect of things they did. so if similar bad stuff happens to them, they may finally understand how it felt to be the victim of their wrong doing. So in that sense of learning the effects of your crime, I do want everyone to get to experience the horrible stuff that they caused. But if the bad stuff happens to them and doesnt cause any learning on their part, i see the karmic punishment as useless.
    In that sense, I dont really think every bad thing that happens is a karmik punishment to you because you did something wrong in a past life. How can you learn your lesson, if you dont remember what you did in past life. I guess bad stuff may happen not as punishment but some kind of test. Or good stuff is not reward but some kind of opportunity to see how you would handle the gifts.

  24. Especially when the justice is poetic, it instills a sense of awe in me: “Wow, this karma shit really works.” It’s hard to feel too much pity when they deserve it, but at the same time, I don’t consider it something to celebrate.

    Being Saturn-ruled, my just desserts are always sure and swift and leave me knowing exactly what act I’m paying for. It’s breathtaking, really.

  25. Yeah, Del, that’s my experience as well. I have definitely done to someone and had it later done to me TIMES 10. Makes you change the way you’re living for sure. The humbling and the pain.

  26. comeuppance: justo castigo
    planets in 12 house?

    i better start to remember 30 years ago

    Once my daughter (11 Y-O) was talking in her sleep
    she open her eyes and tell me (completely sleep)

    “YOU ARE NOT IONICA, tu no eres ionica” WHAT ¡??

    Ion : I Cant to disolve like salt in water.

    And justice in good way?
    I dont like any body to be destroy, that is no justice

  27. i think people create their own downfall more often than not.
    many times when i was younger i got exactly what i thought i wanted… and it wasn’t such a good thing.

    i also think saturn and pluto shape how it plays out.

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