My Name Is Earl, Karma & Us

A show I’ve been enjoying a lot recently is NBC’s “My Name Is Earl“.

It’s a light comedy show that takes the main character’s interesting simplistic definition of Karma: “You do good things, and good things happen to you. You do bad things, and bad things happen to you.”, and makes a really cool show out of it.

In order to turn his life around, Earl makes a list of all the bad things he did in his life to try and set them right in order to get on Karma’s good side. A bunch of funny situations and stories follow on from that point on.

Other than it being a really fun and light show to end a full work day with, I also like its simplistic approach to things, I myself am a fan of breaking things down to a simple straight-forward formula; I don’t like all the complicated weaving of words to make something sound sophisticated and well thought out, a great idea/conception is a great one no matter how you say it, in fact it’s even greater if it’s so simple to explain.

Anyway, today while out doing our shopping, a question occurred to me, inspired from the tv show: If I created a list of bad things I did in the past and that I had to set right, how long would the list be? What would be in it?

Fortunately for me, I’ve been a pretty good person in my past, and I still try to be one in my present, but that only means that my list isn’t such a long one, still it does exist. Maybe the things on it aren’t that bad, including stuff like not attending a friend’s wedding when I could, or not calling someone I should have, or other stuff of that caliber; but still if it’s there and I can set things straight in one way or another, maybe I should at least try to.

What do you think? Have you ever remembered some of the things you’re not so proud of from your past and thought of correcting them? Or do you think that what’s buried in the past should remain that way? Do you believe in karma? Do you believe that what goes around comes around?