Karma Cleanser - March 26 2003

?Dear Karma Cleanser:
Are some people just born lucky, and others not? I have a friend who has the most outstanding luck. She can pick up guys without even trying. She blinks her eyes the right way and her dad buys her a new car. Last week she even went on a cruise to the Caribbean, and met a hot guy from the U.K. They totally hit it off and he’s coming to visit her next month. (I’ve seen a photo, and trust me, he is very hot.)

What am I doing wrong? I am not unattractive, and my parents are pretty good to me (although I did not get a new car when I turned 16). I’m starting to think that maybe I’m just unlucky and should just accept that about myself.

-- Girl, Dejected


Rather than sneering at your friend’s life with a poked-lip of envy, maybe you should take a break from your personal pity party and rethink the situation. Sounds like your friend is not so much lucky as she is just a spoiled little slut. OK, maybe that’s taking it too far, but perhaps that helps you blink your own eyes and refocus a little. As our friend and Zen songwriter Lucas likes to say, the world is just a big, blank movie screen, on which you project your own film from within. Your challenge here is to change that flick from a woe-is-me melodrama to a movie of your own making.

br>?Dear Karma Cleanser:
We read your response to the guy who was having geographical bad karma (March 5) and we’re surprised by your answer: “If there’s a voice in your head screaming, ‘Leave this place!’ then by all means, listen to it.”

It’s true that our bodies and our subconscious thoughts often do know what’s best for us. And maybe this letter writer should have listened to your advice and paid more attention to the own inner-workings of his mind. But his letter makes it sound more like he’s living in a hell of his own creation. If he decided from the start that he’s not meant to flourish in this one particular city, then doesn’t that become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy? Are we not the masters of our own fate?

-- Location, location, location


Good point. In fact, your argument is creepily similar to our response to the above letter. Perhaps we erred in instructing that reader to flee his adopted town so quickly. Then again, in the end, everyone does what they always wanted to do anyway, and we suspect his U-Haul has already departed in search of sunnier pavement.

Been bad? Say yes to life, no to negativity and maybe to Deepak Chopra. karma@creativeloafing.com.