I, a damn musician thief, and Karma

My santurs are stolen… all three of them.

I used to play santur when I was back in Iran. I didn’t show any extraordinary talent for it, but I was considered a good player. I had performed in a bunch of concerts and most of the time, at home, for myself. When I got married, the apartment was too small to play santur in it, and besides, we moved to Canada after a short period of time. I left my santurs behind.

There were three of them. Two were mine, different qualities. The third I had inherited from a late beloved family member. It was of great quality, very dear to me since the late uncle had played it. Every time I had a trip back home, I would sit behind it and play whatever song which was still lingering in my memory. The sound would still make my heart to skip a beat.

I decided that this time, when I go back home, I’ll bring one of them with me. I missed the sound and the songs. So I asked my father a couple of weeks ago to take them out of the storage room, have them tuned to pitch, give the first two for charity, and keep my inherited one to bring it with myself if I make it back home this year. Last week, he said that when he was taking them to get tuned; they were stolen. All three of them.

I was of course angry, I asked my father if he had reported to the police and he laughed at me, “Dear, they don’t care when much bigger things get lost in this country, let alone your santurs”. Then I was disappointed. I was sad, very sad. And I felt also a bit guilty, which was strange. Why did I feel guilty?

Then I figured it out. I was taking “Cause and Action” for “the order of happenings”. You see, for me, as a person who does not believe in any religion anymore, and at the same time is tending toward finding some meaning or pattern in the surrounding incidents, it is an old habit to relate one phenomenon to another. I was feeling that I had turned my back to my music instruments. I had turned my back at them and they had left me. Simple as that.

Then I shook my head: I am not the center of the universe. It has nothing to do with me and my decisions for life. The universe/life/nature goes its own way, and not everything is related to me. There may be some coincidences, but not everything is a consequence of my actions. There has been some carelessness, and a damn smart thief involved.

Honestly, it still keeps me busy thinking, how true and wide is Karma? I can see so many cases in which Karma doesn’t seem to exist at all, and some cases that can be very well explained by that. Is it true that absolutely everything which comes aroundis the result something which went around ? Then why sometimes it isn't? How many of the surrounding incidents are meaningless, merely “incidents”?
I am coming very close to believing that even if there is a pattern, I am not intelligent enough to find it. Maybe no one is intelligent enough to find it. It gets more and more obvious and clear to me, no one can broadcast their manifests “we know how the world works”. No one knows people, no one knows.

At the end, the matter of fact is, whatever the pattern, meaningless or meaningful, Karma or not, my santurs are gone. And I will forever miss them…