I Believe

I believe in a higher power. I believe a social conscience is more than just bleeding-heart crap, it's a way of life and a better manner of existing. I believe that animals have emotions. I believe that books have some sort of life of their own because stories are absolutely magic to me. I believe that something about our planet will always be damaged and hell bent for destruction until the people of every nation learn to think globally. I still believe in my heart of hearts that my father is 10 feet tall and can do anything. I believe that my sister will love me no matter what I do. I believe that love is a holy state of being. I believe that the ordinary can be transcendent and alive with possibility. I believe in saying please and thank you. I believe that men who hold the door for you are just better to be around. I believe that we miss too much when we sleep. I believe in being honest but never cruel.

I believe so very very many things.

But today I have decided that I absolutely believe in Internet Karma.

I get in these moods. These manic dear-god-does-anyone-love-me freak out moods where I check email every ten minutes. I don't do it all the time. It's not a constant compulsion. I do this maybe once a month, but when I get like this it's frantic and obsessive and I cannot seem to stop myself and it ALWAYS happens on a day when no one happens to be emailing me so I become convinced that no one is speaking to me. It's mad. It never lasts for more than a few hours but it's completely irrational and I think it's an unhealthy reaction to the constant influx of information that we simply aren't equipped for because technology is evolving faster than we are.

But there it is. I do this. Every now and then. And I was talking to my baby sister about this and she pointed out to me that she had just emailed me the day before - and I had not responded. And she's right. Most of the time I just don't care that much about email and I read what people send me quickly and then I move on with my day - often being too rude and self-focused to respond, to let them know I got their message.

And then I stop getting emails from OTHER UNRELATED PEOPLE. Not even the same people. Not people who know each other. It's like the universe decides to teach me a lesson. But I don't always notice at first.

Then I have one of my days. And it hits me that no one has emailed me in like 24 hours so clearly EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE has stopped speaking to me and I become distraught. Despondent. Limp and unmanageable.

Then I think about the people I have made feel this way. And sure enough - perusing my in box reveals several ignored missives! So I reply to all of them and - I am not kidding - within ten minutes I start to hear from the other people I was waiting to hear from. It's completely bizarre. But it happened to me today. I sent off email responses to my baby sister, an old friend from high school and my aunt. Minutes later I had heard from a theater friend who had not been getting back to me for weeks, a friend I know from Florida and another person I had lost track of ages ago. Unrelated people. Who could not possibly have ever met, much less be calling each other to say, "Oh, you can email her now. She's finally responded to my question from last week. She's learned her lesson."

Proof. Interweb Karma. I know I've written about it before but today was just WEIRD. Not something to build a faith on or anything but further proof of how strange life is and how long-existing concepts can be reprocessed and re-imagined through the miracle of technology.

I totally believe.