I was always super generous, and had some great years. I wondered if people would forget if I had some down years. Well, I did have some down years, and people didn't forget, they smoked me out. Now I'm back to being generous again. I don't know that I really believe in karma as any kind of absolute thing (e.g. what goes around *always* comes around), but I have definitely noticed that being generally kind and generous does 'pay off' in the end, and not always in expected ways. Maybe it's because I don't ever really *expect* it to 'pay off' that makes it work.

The biggest example is, I loaned a friend some money when he was in danger of losing his car, coupla car payments or so. It took him literally *years* to pay that back, but I was patient. Then he was working in the gaming industry and spiffed up some of my characters in a MMORPG, I mean big-time, artifacts and ungodly stuff for all my characters, plus tons of virtual moolah and sellable items and such. I ended up getting bored with that game, and sold it all off for around eight grand. Cha ching! I had no clue that people paid real money for in-game stuff, at least to that degree, but they do. And he gave me that in addition to repaying the debt, a kind of bonus for my patience.