Karma

post by: Ticana Zhu

At the end of August, I got into a fender bender. Everyone walked away from it. I was upset but it was my dream car. I had waited fifteen years before I got it and I’d only owned it a year and a half. … And it hadn’t been an easy piece of property to take care of! From the windshield being cracked by a random freeway rock in the first four months, to rude strangers leaving dents. (Obviously, I didn’t see who did it). I did try to investigate, but the properties had no cameras. I don’t know if it had anything to do with its size. It’s a mid-sized SUV. Previously, I drove a little sports car, and didn’t have such issues. (maybe a tiny chip from a freeway rock, but a windshield kit fixed it right up!)

If I can help it, I park my new SUV a distance away from others at every chance. On top of that, I obsessively circle it every time I return to the parking lot. Or at the very least, a cursory glance for obvious disturbances.

On top of that, the summer before (2018), I nearly got rear-ended. I was stopped in traffic on a freeway on ramp. Another SUV came barreling towards me, unable to stop , though I could tell she was trying (we were on a downward slope). I saw it coming and swerved out of the way. I avoided the collision. The lady in that car and I exchanged a look. She appeared grateful. I’m pretty sure I looked pissed. But I didn’t let it fester. After all, nothing happened.

All this care… it only enhanced my annoyance when a minivan slammed into me while I was stopped in traffic.

Every now and then, I have a prophetic dream. The night before the accident, I dreamt of a raven. It perched quite close to me and cawed. When I tried to chase it away, it didn’t move. Unspooked. I waved an object at it, quite close, but not quite hitting it. It was unfazed. I began to get an eerie feeling. When I woke from the dream, I still had an off sensation. I googled the meaning of a raven dream. (Of course, this isn’t always the clearest method to understand something, but it was a start.) It didn’t make me feel better that one of the things it forewarned was death. Another was inevitable misfortune. But as I set about my day, the dream was brushed to the back of my mind.

A few hours later when I got rear-ended, the first words out of my mouth were: “That explains the raven.”

This was clearly misfortune.

Still, it could’ve been a lot worse. I’m grateful it’s not.

As the day continued, I began to wonder if I had somehow accrued bad karma. Perhaps I’d done something that led to this giant disappointment. I was vending for Space Tigers at the Oktoberfest. Many people brought their dogs to the event. At the end of the day, there was a beautiful, sweet german shepherd that came through. Her owner was friends with a neighboring vendor. By the end of the night, she’d taken a liking to me and slept on my feet. The owner talked to us for an hour or so and she gave me most of her attention.

I then found out her name was Karma.

I couldn’t help but smile. For a little while at least, I had good Karma. (pun intended)

Perhaps sometimes, even if you have prophetic dreams about it, an accident is just an accident. You can still have good karma.

This is not a sponsored post. Tune in November 5th, for our next post, by Ava Reiss.