Karma - Memory + Action

I hung out with a friend recently at Oktoberfest. I realized exactly how long it had been since I'd seen him when he informed me that he'd been living in the Pacific Northwest for over a year already (which I had failed to notice prior to the request to hang out while he was "in town.")

This very drunk guy came up to us in the beer hall tent and asked us if we knew that Jesus and God are the answer to everything that ails the entire world? (I'm not going to lie, it reminded me a teeny tiny bit of several experiences in my yoga class.)

"Only in this area," I told the man soberly. Then he wandered off.

Appropos of nothing, Theo told me that in his dating adventures, he has discovered that FOBO is a real thing. I had never even heard of this. I'm familiar with FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out. But apparently, FOBO (Fear of Better Options) is a malady that particularly affects the newly divorced. Having never been newly divorced, I'd apparently missed out on this.

Well, riddle me this, Batman: isn't "fear of better options" actually "fear of (missing out on) better options"? So what makes it any different?

Apparently what makes it different is that it has been written about many, many, many times in regards to dating. Who knew? Certainly not me, as I deleted all the apps. ALL. OF. THEM. I'm living my best life here!

(I actually mean that. It's a real relief to not have to pretend to be charming anymore and to just be the Swamp Witch that nature intended. Except for that my hands are starting to get wrinkly, which is deeply upsetting to me. I guess I always considered them one of my best features, probably because I had to stare at them so much when playing the piano. Seeing them grow wrinkly as I age is upsetting. I mean, I have to look at my hands, not my face.)

All right so FOBO: Fear of Better Options. 

Apparently, newly divorced men go nuts and write off lots of great women because they are convinced that an even Greater Person is waiting just around the next swipe. I am assuming that Theo speaks from personal experience here, as he was newly divorced a few years ago.

With FOBO, you compare everyone not only to what you had as a married person, but what you might have in your perfect future.

It's all about memory, and that's where yoga comes in. (You didn't honestly think this post was going to proceed without yoga, did you?)

As it turns out, most people have a profoundly misguided understanding of the concept of karma. We think that karma is a tit-for-tat system wherein if I do something bad to someone, something bad is going to happen to me. It's not that.

I am reading this book by Sadhguru, and I would love to tell you exactly what karma is. But sadly, I cannot, because I understand very little of it. I seem to have underlined every sentence without actually getting it. I only know what karma is not, and it is not that thing above. About 90 pages in, all I can unequivocally tell you is that karma is memory combined with action. It is the memory of all your actions and the trajectory these things are propelling you towards. We operate by rote, by nature. If everything in our nature and habit and experience is compelling us toward a certain future, that is the future we are going to have --- unless we deliberately change it.

How does this relate to what I'm saying? We judge others by our past experiences and we judge our future experiences by our past experiences. What would it look like to refrain from judgment altogether? To be merely an observer?

To change our karma, we have to first be aware of it. What is the path I am on? What are the memories that are guiding my actions? What would it look like to act consciously, instead of from automatic, unconscious memory?

And -- perhaps someday -- what would it look like to form friendships and relationships not from automatic memory + action, but from deliberate consciousness?