Last week I went to the doctor because my left arm and my right leg felt like they had fallen asleep and wouldn’t wake up. My right leg is familiar with this feeling, since I suffered from a bulging disc in my lower back for 15 months before finally having back surgery. Chronic pain sucks. But I’ve been pain free for over a year now, so when I started feeling that tingling last week, I panicked. I was having a relapse.
The doctor introduced me to “The Decompressor,” which looks like some kind of Medieval sadomasochistic torture device. Essentially, it stretches out the spine so the discs can slip back into place. As the doctor was standing over me, he said jokingly, “You must have been a really terrible person in your past life.” I laughed, while crying a little bit inside. “Yes, Karma is a bitch.”
I spent the next twenty minutes “decompressing” in a tiny dark room that was probably meant to be a closet. While my spine worked itself out, I thought about what the doctor said. If I really was Scarface in my previous life, then I’d like to go back in time and give him a big kiss on the lips. I have him to thank for my new perspective on life.
It’s the challenges you face that can make or break you. For me, overcoming my back injury made me appreciate a million little things, like sitting in a car for a 2 hour road trip, or going to see a movie with a cute boy, or burning up the dance floor until the early hours of the morning. If you haven’t done at least one of these things in the past 6 months, you are missing out!
So if I spend this life paying off some of that gangster karma with acts of good, my next life is looking pretty great. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to keep getting into trouble. I don’t want my next life to be too perfect. That would just be boring. And I’m happy to enjoy the life I’m in right now.
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Do Some Good: Go Back to 5th Grade
