My Two-Cents: Karma + Cigarettes
Last Sunday, I was riding the train back from the Twins game, scrolling through my phone, when an older man came up to me, holding out his pack of Marlboros like an olive branch. He flipped the lid and nodded for me to take one. I smiled back and did just that. He responded with, “Have a good day” and meandered to a spot at the back of the train.
From our brief interaction, I realized I was at a crossroads with interpreting the interaction: either I looked like I was in desperate need of a cigarette (yikes), or he was just moving through the world with a mindset I should emulate. I had just scored a free cig, cha-ching! And more importantly, I noticed an unexpected elevation in my mood. Sauntering off the train, I felt a new lightness in my stride — a fresh appreciation for my Sunday afternoon. I decided it was my turn to pay back the Karma Gods. Especially since my last social experiment (ref: Fake News, Real Fun) was morally gray at best — and life is about balance. Do some shady stuff, then do some nice stuff. Net neutral. It was time to test out if as Justin Timberlake once said, what comes around goes around… goes around… goes aroundddddd. (I fucking love that song.)
I won’t bore you with the details of my good deeds, but they mostly consisted of low-stakes acts of kindness. Writing more notes. Grabbing things for people when I was already on the way. Giving $5 to strangers on my walk to school (it's loan money, so it's not real anyway). Offering to pick up a friend from the airport. Coercing my roommate into making Oreo balls for class (then forgetting them and eating them all ourselves, oops). Smiling at strangers. Complimenting people in elevators. Yada yada yada. This proceeded for the duration of the week.
As the clock struck midnight on Sunday night, my social experiment officially ended. My week of good karma was over. I figured I could go back to being a bitch! Yippee. Or maybe proceed with an “I’ve changed” mindset and pledge to live a selfless, karma-fueled existence from here on out. Neither is 100% true.
Though I started the week intending to do good to receive good, annoying things still happened. I missed trains. Showed up late to class. Got stuck in traffic. So my expected visceral reaction to my social experiment began to morph – because my good karma didn’t exactly reap the benefits I’d hoped for. I was not blessed with more random passersbys christening me with free cigarettes, but I did start to see from a new vantage point.
I didn’t get what I gave. And I didn’t care. The giving itself was sufficient. In the past, I’d been fed a secretly toxic narrative diet: “You don’t owe anyone anything.” Which is empowering in some contexts — boundaries are important. But taken too far, that mindset keeps us from showing up for each other in meaningful ways. Not all interactions need to be two-way transactions.
It’s not technically our responsibility to care for others, but we should do it anyway. As my favorite podcast always closes with, “Take care of yourself — and, if you can, someone else too.” There are times when we can’t help others. We’re stretched too thin. But those times make it all the more important to realize that when you can help someone else, why wouldn’t you? Not because the universe will pay you back, but because you simply are able to. How fucking sick. How cool is it to give, to offer, and to love without expecting anything in return. When given the choice to envy or embrace giving help to others, why would you not pick the latter? How easy is it to hand out more cigarettes to people who look like they might need one. In a world where karma is a bitch, hand her a cigarette and tell her to get over herself.
