I believe in Karma. If you do good things, good things will happen for you.

In eighth grade, I got an F in math class. Usually my friends and I would talk and ignore the teacher. Then on tests I would try to answer the questions, but I usually got them wrong. I was very social. I think I sat in every part of the room because I talked too much. The teacher moved me around, but I talked to everyone, not just my friends.

I had to go to summer tutoring at the University of Portland. My summer tutor is the first person who really got me thinking about Karma. My math tutor told me that it was very important to try and focus so teachers would respect me and know that I wanted to learn. This was when I realized that I needed to actually apply myself and that I couldn’t just fake it. I had been told this my whole life, but it had never really clicked until then. I was really focused on hanging out with friends instead of school.

I started looking up Karma on Wikipedia. I didn’t have any structured religion growing up. I knew a lot of families who were Catholic or Christan, but I think not having a religion was freeing. My parents didn’t really grow up with a religion, so I didn’t have one either. As my interest in Karma escalated, it became more of a religion for me. The religion is officially called Taoism. It’s not a church religion, but more of a humanist religion. I was individualist before. I didn’t really care if I affected anyone else.

Now, I meditate every day to get rid of my stress. I try to do this every day for 10 minutes. Meditating helped me calm down and think clearer. It got me thinking: What can I do to be a better person?

If anyone needs anything, I try to come through for them to the best of my ability. Good Karma could be the smallest thing to the biggest thing– such as helping a friend turn in a homework assignment they left in the library, or bailing someone out of jail (I have not done this yet), either way, I get a good spiritual feeling.

When I started looking into Karma, I found a quote that has really stuck with me: “You can’t live a perfect day until you do something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

I hope someday to be able to do this for someone.