Karma is a … dodgy devil

If karma is real, then I must have been Attila the Hun in a past life.

And it’s worrying on another level because he wasn’t much younger than I when he died, probably on a chicken bone while stuffing his face.

Of course, this is my own interpretation, because no one really knows how he died – assassinated or internal bleeding, who knows.

The reason I’m wondering if I was a terrible person in a past life is because of all the issues I’ve had with my face from literally the womb.

Born with a harelip, massive dental problems all my life finally culminated in me losing my smile. I don’t want to go into too many details, because it is gross, however, I now get to literally flap my gums.

Draw your own picture. I do think it’s time karma left me alone for a little while.

It does seem unfair if Attila could go around lopping heads off at will, conquering countries, living an excessive lifestyle, I get to be punished for his misdeeds.

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The guy lived hard. There was much patronage, he married a few times, he apparently killed his own brother – family drama, it goes a long way back – and when he died, “lay in state in a silken tent as a sight for men’s admiration”.

Granted, the author, Jordanes (they weren’t big on surnames back then) may have been taking poetic and romantic licence – this was in 453 after all.

Which raises another question. How is it that 1 568 years later I feel like I’m paying for his misdeeds?

Karma, if you’re listening, I feel like that may be a little harsh.

Yes, there’s Hitler, responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and about 55 million dead all told, Belgian king Leopold II who treated the Congo as his personal property and killed off millions of people, or even Ghengis Khan.

Now there’s a guy who wasn’t afraid to say what he was really feeling.

“I am the punishment of God … If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you,” he is quoth.

He also lived large, with many wives and concubines. With further reflection, scratch that last one, it may have been karma in action for him.

Again, he owned a large chunk of the known world which he took by lopping heads off himself.

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Depending on where you stand, Ghengis Khan was a great military strategist and a conqueror, or learned his lessons well from Attila. It’s said we learn from history, which is incorrect.

“The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history,” German philosopher Georg Hegel said.

Obviously, as an enlightened generation a few hundred years later, we cannot ride around on our steed cleaving people in half with our battle axes.

Now we just obliterate people through genocide and modern military weapons for localised power.

And after the local elections, our politicians who smote us with smarmy promises they never intend to keep sidle into coalitions with people who, for those of us few who voted, never voted for.

What the final picture will look like is going to take a while before it settles into its grey amorphous blob where we, the people, don’t matter and the votes don’t count.

Seems like karma isn’t done with me – or us – yet.