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I Thought I Wanted Karma. What I Needed Was Release. · Just Julia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I wanted karma.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: What I needed was release.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: There are moments when someone hurts us and even if we never say it out loud,
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: a part of us starts waiting.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: We wait for them to regret it.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For life to show them what they lost.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: For something to happen that will prove that what they did was wrong.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe a relationship ends badly.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe a friendship breaks.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe someone overlooks you,
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  SPEAKER_00: replaces you,
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  SPEAKER_00: disappoints you,
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  SPEAKER_00: or simply continues with their life while you are still trying
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: to understand what happened.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And because you are hurting, you start watching.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not obsessively, perhaps, but enough.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: You notice what happens to them.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: You wonder whether life will eventually return the lesson.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere inside you is the thought, one day they will understand.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I have done this more than once.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: For a while,
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  SPEAKER_00: I thought what I wanted was justice,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe karma,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe an apology,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe simply the satisfaction of knowing
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: that somebody eventually understood what they had done.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then, recently, I received a piece of news connected to an old part of my life.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I remember looking at my phone, reading it twice, and feeling something in me go quiet.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: What surprised me was that I wasn't pleased.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't celebrating.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I just felt lighter.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: A situation I had carried as deeply personal suddenly looked different from
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: a distance and for the first time I thought, maybe this was never entirely about me.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: That realization released something I had not fully understood I was still carrying.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: It did not change what had happened
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: and it did not suddenly make every decision acceptable,
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: but it changed the meaning I had attached to it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I stopped asking quite so intensely, why me?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why wasn't I enough?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why did they move forward while I was left trying to make sense of it?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: What had felt like a verdict on my worth started to look more like one part of
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  SPEAKER_00: a much bigger story.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is what resentment can sometimes hide.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: We imagine we are waiting for the other person to suffer,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: but underneath that desire there is often something much more vulnerable.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: We want proof that we mattered.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: We want evidence that we were not foolish for being hurt.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: We want someone, somewhere, to look at what happened and say, yes.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: That was unfair.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: You deserved better.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that while we wait for that verdict,
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: the people who hurt us continue to occupy space in our lives.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: They may no longer be calling us,
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  SPEAKER_00: working beside us,
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  SPEAKER_00: sleeping next to us,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: or even thinking about us, but we are still in conversation with them in our heads.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: We replay what happened.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: We imagine what we should have said.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: We wonder what is happening to them now.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: We wait for some future event to finally close
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: a chapter they may not even know we are still reading.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I believe life has its own way of rearranging things.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I call that God.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the universe.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes timing.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I know other people might call it karma, consequences, or simply life unfolding.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the label matters as much as what I am beginning to understand.
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  SPEAKER_00: I do not need to supervise it.
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  SPEAKER_00: That might be the lesson I needed most.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I do not need to keep checking whether the person who hurt me is finally hurting too.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: I do not need their regret in order to validate my pain.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I do not need an apology before I am allowed to move forward.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I certainly do not need someone else's downfall to prove my worth.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Their consequences belong to them.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: My attention belongs to me.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there is someone you are still mentally watching too.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: A former partner,
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  SPEAKER_00: a friend,
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  SPEAKER_00: someone you worked with,
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  SPEAKER_00: a person who chose somebody else,
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  SPEAKER_00: underestimated you,
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  SPEAKER_00: disappointed you, or walked away without giving you the ending you wanted.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe part of you is still waiting for something to happen that will finally make
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: the whole story feel fair.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I am not going to tell you simply to forgive and forget.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think human emotions work like that.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Anger has its place.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it is how we first recognize that something mattered to us.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: But perhaps there comes a moment when we can begin asking a different question.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: How much of my attention am I still giving to someone who no longer deserves a role
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: in my present?
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  SPEAKER_00: For me, letting go has started to mean something much smaller and more practical
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: than suddenly feeling peaceful about everything.
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  SPEAKER_00: It can mean not checking,
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  SPEAKER_00: not replaying,
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  SPEAKER_00: not inventing future conversations in which the other person finally understands,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: not meeting their life to validate what happened in mine.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It does not mean saying, what happened was okay.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: It means saying, what happened will not continue owning my attention.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the universe does eventually work things out.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe people face the consequences of what they do.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe one day we receive information that makes an old story look completely different.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe none of that happens.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: But perhaps freedom begins before we know.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: It begins when we stop waiting for life to prove us right and start taking back
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: the energy we left behind with the people who hurt us.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And lately, that feels much more powerful to me than revenge ever could.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just Julia.