Life's Accounts

  Karma has sometimes been compared to the notion of keeping score of one's pluses and minuses. I recall reading that in Muslim culture, there is a similar notion of Allah weighing the positives as opposed to the negatives of one's behavior. I believe that even the ancient Greek concept of the afterlife has harbored a similar idea. It makes sense to say that one's good deeds should outweigh their bad deeds, but I wonder if there could be an algorithm as comprehensive enough to sum up all of a person's deeds, inactions and "misdeeds". What would such a computer look like? Of course, the idea itself is a thought: it comes and goes, depending on how dedicated we try to be toward it.

   Working on my thesis feels to me this way. I look at the thing one day and it looks okay, but then reading another article makes me want to tweak it to make it better. I shape and tweak it until I feel that I have satisfied someone's requirements--ideally, the person in my head who I feel is qualified to speak about it and assess its total quality. But in the end, it doesn't feel that this thesis, or any writing for that matter, ever really finishes. It's meant to be a little bit asymmetrical in relation to its original intent and goal: a surprise, even to its creator. But without surprises, the creation is a little bit pointless. I create in order to fundamentally surprise myself through the learning. If I had the thesis all in my head before writing it down, how surprising would that be to me, and how would it constitute the adventure that comes from inquiry and creation? In situations like these, I can't really resort to an accounting metaphor, because what I put into it should (hopefully) not equal what comes out.

  If all one had to do was to contribute "good balances" into the account of life, there would not only be little purpose, but also little room for expansion and surprise. I often do things not because I have determined them to be good --at least not yet, anyway--but because they give me room to breathe and advance a little so that I can see and discover new things in myself. So I didn't embark on this project simply to gain merit, or bring it to others, but to see what's possible by extending myself a bit. Some of what's possible might be downright useless or bad, but there is a risk of that which comes from acting and being both a creator and someone being created by things outside me. But I consider this to be the miraculous thing about learning; it's value is never fully disclosed but always being revealed in the moment.