A friend had experienced a tragedy.

People wanted to help this friend because they loved him. He had helped many people and now people wanted to help him.

And he has helped many people. He is an open door of hospitality and generosity to strangers and dear friends. In his company, strangers soon become dear friends.

He’s that kind of guy. But whereas he is a man who helps others without their asking, he is a stranger to asking for help. Needing help, he did not know how to ask for it. Offered help, he received it uncertainly.

I said it as a gesture of making the acceptance of help more acceptable. I said it with good intentions, but having been said, it seemed clumsy.

I said he should view the help offered him as karma for all of the help he had offered others.

Karma: What goes around comes around. His good deeds were being rewarded by those wanting to do good deeds for him. Once spoken, there it hung. Awkward. Unsaid. One could not avoid the realization of it. The bigger thing. The tragedy behind all of it.

It loomed in the silence.

If karma was paying him back for his good deeds then this must be some dirty trick.

If karma gives as good as it gets then my friend should not be suffering this tragedy in the first place. He shouldn’t need to accept help because his good deeds would transcend the need to ask for help. His good deeds would absolve him of all tragedies, especially this tragedy. Right?

All of this flitted through my mind. He may have thought the same thing during that silent pause before breathing marched us onto the forced conversation of a changed subject.

I’ve thought about it since. Karma. And maybe karma isn’t about the things that are unchangeable.

We are all the results of the miracles of birth and we will all succumb to the tragedy of death. Even a comedy played out to its ultimate conclusion ends in death. Yet, we have the ability to laugh despite this knowledge.

Maybe karma is about the things we can change. Maybe karma is wrapped in how we treat others rather than the larger issues of fate. We cannot end death or poverty or suffering. But we can comfort those who grieve. We can help those who struggle. We can soothe those in pain.

Perhaps, karma is in the biblical golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

My friend has always done unto others in the best of ways, opening his heart, his home, his wallet, his talents. In the end, even in tragedy, others are reciprocating by offering these same things to him.

Karma could not stave off tragedy, but it may be doing everything in its power to help him through.

Dean Poling is The Valdosta Daily Times assistant managing editor.