Sept 18, 2024–Don’t walk under a ladder.
Don’t let a black cat cross your path.
Knock on wood.
Step on a crack; break your mother’s back.
We’ve all heard these and other superstitions since we were in grade school. They sound childish and were the source of harmless fun.
So why do we give them power over our decisions?
No one really believes seeing a black cat will portend disaster. Yet I would bet you would feel a tiny tinge of trepidation when an inky tabby tiptoes across your trail. You might even employ a counter-superstition and toss a pinch of salt over your shoulder. You know… just in case.
Even if you outgrow the childish versions of these, as adults we concoct entire belief systems based on random machinations of the universe. In some circles, what one person considers a religion, others call a cult. We all have pseudo-scientific systems we use to guide our lives, like letting a snowball in retrograde in the house of hoecakes determine whether we buy new drapes. I remember one bandmate not wanting us to play our first gig because it was during a waning moon. (We should have named the band Waning Moon.)
What if, as the character in a sitcom said after observing that a superstition didn’t cause a catastrophe, stuff just happens? We cannot control stuff that happens. We can barely control our reactions to the stuff that happens.
I surmise humankind is wired to believe superstitions as a construct to give us comfort. We find it impossible to believe we are powerless individuals buffeted by the randomness of a blind universe. If we awoke each day and had to relearn every single cause and effect, it would be exhausting. We would be goldfish, constantly astonished as we circled our bowl.
It is logical to be illogical, at least at first, when you think about it. One key to our survival is the ability to discern patterns. We hear the saber tooth roar; we notice cousin Oog is missing. Soon we put the two together and declare the roar of a tiger means bad luck. The trouble occurs when we find patterns that don’t exist. Soon we believe if you spy a full moon through a tree’s branches during finals week, you’ll fail your physics test.
I don’t know if it is possible to escape the spiral. Whole branches of treatment have sprung up to help us grapple with our phobias, obsessions, and compulsions. It is comical that many turn to nostrums and patent medicines as counter-measures to imagined maladies, in effect, treating one imaginary cause for an imaginary effect.
As someone familiar with borderline OCD, I got to where I didn’t even want to hear about any new superstition, afraid it would bore into my sub-brain and influence my behavior. That in itself became a negative behavior.
The best strategy I’ve devised is to overwhelm the gatekeeper. If you can keep bombarding your senses with input, soon you stop trying to analyze everything and just react. Covered in real distractions, you stop giving energy to imaginary distractions.
Does that work?
I’ll let you know during the next waxing moon.
XXX
Phil Houseal is a compulsive writer and obsessive owner of Full House PR. Contact him at phil@fullhouseproductions.net, www.FullHousePR.com.