Lately I’ve been thinking about curses. As in cursing people. This sounds violent, I know; but hear me out. Because I think those of us denying the felt urge to curse someone, or a desire for the balancing act of karma, are not quite honest or aware. One doesn’t have to look long at the news to feel the curse building.
The urge to curse someone for doing terrible things doesn’t mean necessarily wanting to do terrible things to them. Really, for most of us, it means wanting those harming people or animals or the planet to experience the consequences of their actions. Consequences are not violence. Ideally, consequences are doled out by the justice system—and by loving parents—for our benefit or for rehabilitation. But sometimes it seems as though powerful, wealthy people, or those willing and able to threaten people effectively, are buffered from consequences. Wanting consequences is as natural and right as wanting equilibrium.
This is where karma comes in, or in layman’s terms, the concept of cause and effect. No one can outrun their karma, or the effects that are a consequence of their actions. Though I am not affiliated with the Indian religions from which karma originated, I love the concept.
Even if we are forgiven by someone we have harmed—even forgiven by God—our actions are like a stone tossed into a pond, and the consequences of those actions are the inevitable ripples. Wanting someone to experience their karma is not to want violence, but it is a way to direct our anger. And anger is often a valid and healthy emotion; it is necessary.
I’ve come to understand curses and karma hand-in-hand. To curse someone is to say, I wish you the consequences of your actions. I wish you cause and effect. I wish you the full heft of your bad karma. Blessings are similarly understood. To bless someone who does good is to say, I wish you a fulsome experience of your good karma.
In my experience, when someone we love hurts us so badly we curse them, it’s often much later that we see them living out that curse—or living the consequences or effects of their bad karma. Sometimes by the time it arrives, our hearts have healed and we have forgiven them, and yet karma marches along anyway. At times, it hurts to see them live it.
But at the same time, if we could, at that point, save them from their karma, would that be the loving action? Don’t we all need to know the effects of our harms? Don’t those effects help us to see how we have hurt people, and isn’t that experience the testing ground of our love for them? The ability to hurt people without remorse or consequence is the definition of sociopathy.
Reflections on curses and karma gave rise to the following poem. It is a fantasy of cursing individuals who have harmed me. One friend commented on the poem’s “sizzle.” May it inspire you to experiment with curses and karma in your own way, to create your own sizzle. I leave you with…
Curses
“You gotta be tough to get this far in your life if you’re not tough.”
—UnknownThere you sit in my living room, arrogance cinched tight
around you like chaps; lawyered up and threatening,
projecting all your daddy issues, unprocessedoffenses, smiling tightly, snug in your bigotry.
You think you can sow brambles in my garden?
Steal my sense of home? Your karma will be the erranttrain of scandal; a tower collapsing around you
as you just reach the top. All of your triumphs, false.
There you are, sending this tornado to bowl meover, unseat me, stifle dissent—that two-way
street between you and a village called Legacy.
All of your triumphs, false. Your karma will bea word lost here and there, missed deadlines, ascendant
fear because you sacrificed your values
to reach the top. There you summon me to your office,playing the power card. But all of your triumphs
are false. I will walk out of that room with dust of curses
on the soles of my feet: Your karma, a drag netsweeping away accolades you spoon with
at night, fawning friends who fear you. Your vapid
hierarchies. All of your triumphs are false.© Tricia Gates Brown
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Wren, winner of a 2022 Independent Publishers Award Bronze Medal
Winner of the 2022 Independent Publisher Awards Bronze Medal for Regional Fiction; Finalist for the 2022 National Indie Excellence Awards. (2021) Paperback publication of Wren , a novel. “Insightful novel tackles questions of parenthood, marriage, and friendship with finesse and empathy … with striking descriptions of Oregon topography.” —Kirkus Reviews (2018) Audiobook publication of Wren.
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