Paying the Price

Share

A close acquaintance of mine has a themed party every year that I attend. A few years ago, it was a pie party. When Charles asked me if I was going to have any pie, I told him that if I did then I was going to have to jog it off in the morning, and I didn’t feel like it, so I would pass. You see, I learned long ago that eventually if you want something you have to pay the price.

I see a lot of people who don’t seem to be paying it now. Many young folks I know and even people close to my age subsist on ramen, fast food, and corn dogs, and still look skinny and pretty and healthy. I know that if I switched to the all McDonalds diet, I would probably fare far differently. In fact, this past week I have been working out every morning as well as a few days per week after work. I have gained weight, and that is always frustrating even though I know that if I’m increasing muscle mass that makes every sense.

Some people do not deserve what they have. They think they are special or better than we are because they won the genetic lottery. So, they live it up hoping they will never have to live it down. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. It has been said that by 40 you have the face you deserve. I know a friend of mine is starting to pay only now for all the drinking and smoking he has done for the past ten years. It took a while to catch up with him, but it’s catching up with him now, and he now weighs more than I do. He’s still skinnier, but it’s probably fatty liver, and I don’t know how you exercise to make your liver smaller.

The law of the harvest tells us that whatever we sow we shall also reap. I am looking for a source, and since I cannot find it, suffice to say that I have read the following thought: we will have to pay in the next life for everything we have received in this life but have not earned, and everything we have earned in this life but not yet received will be ours in the next. That is justice. It says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It says that things come back to you. Some call it karma, some call it judgment, but the fact of the matter is that when you perturb something, the consequences come back eventually, bad or good.