This is not a blessing

It was requested that I talk about superstitions in this blog, by a friend of mine who works someplace with a lot of ladders or something.  She said she saw a kid who was about to run under a ladder and that the kid's mom stopped him and said "don't do that, it's bad luck."  She also said that working there she had to walk under ladders all the time and that she considers herself a lucky person.  I don't.  But I'll get to that.

I think superstitions are deadly real.

Let me explain.  This week I've been dealing with this annoying voice in my head that lies to me every morning about how absolutely terrible my life is right now, and how unable I am to do anything about it.  I'm not motivated enough, organized enough, clever enough, lucky enough, or strong enough, I don't have enough charisma, and in general, I'm not helping nobody.  I may as well be a two-wheel drive vehicle on an icy road, spinning my wheels with as much power as I've got in me and still getting nowhere.  Many of you can relate to this, right?  How many people wrestle with feeling out of control of their own lives?

Objectively, I know I'm more than able to handle my part in life.  I've got all the provisions I need to do exactly what I'm suppose to be doing.  If you look around you, I'll bet you'd see plenty of people getting away with being successful doing far less than the standards you hold for yourself.  So what's really stopping you?  Fear?

We've only really focused as a society on objective reasoning for about a couple hundred years or so.  Before that, thousands of years have gone by where humanity considered subjective reasoning as it's school of thought.  Sure, it's inherently fallacious that just because one thing preceded another implies causation.  But you can see where enough of a trend might make you think, right?

For example: People who live in houses near power lines have a lower life expectancy.  Why?  Is it something to do with the power lines themselves?  Perhaps they emit some sort of radioactivity?  Actually, it's because power lines are ugly, so the property value around them tends to be lower making it affordable to poor people.  And poor people have lower life expectancy because.. well, because they're poor.

But does it really matter why?  If a shark is tearing your leg off, and all you know is that punching it in the nose makes it go away, do you really need to know why?  Might be fun, but it's been largely unnecessary for the past few thousand years.  Lately, we've been blessed enough sociologically to spend large amounts of time and recourses to muddle around in objective reasoning, furthering things like comfort and entertainment, but also so that we know more subjective things like: peeing on a jellyfish sting makes it go away.

Subjective reasoning has kept us safe for a long time.  It's also brought us wives tales and... superstitions.

Within the past month, I've been doing a lot of studying on hypnosis.  I cured an allergy using hypnosis, in fact.  The hypothesis was that since allergies were largely an overreaction of your brain to a foreign stimulus, your brain could also be convinced NOT to overreact to it.  Myth proven, I'd say.  It also lead me to an interesting study on pathologies and their behaviors when subjected to people with dissociative identity disorder.  But that's off subject.

My point is - as always - that your mind is more powerful than you think it is.  The reason I promote and even push positive thinking is that it manifests positive change in people's lives in SUCH a powerful way.  We have a natural tendency toward negative thinking, even if it's realistic thinking.  We repeat to ourselves things we've got to do to-day that we still haven't done, or stress about how we're going to make this work or that.  We find ourselves mulling in regret for past failures and rethinking of what we should have done, and while we might say it's so we don't repeat history, we still doubt more and more that we have it in us to be successful the more we dwell on it.

This makes us more likely to experience what we call the "self-fulfilling prophecy."

Therefor superstitions are VERY real.  For those who believe in them.  I don't knock it.  I'm not saying that I'm going to watch my ass any harder because a black cat crossed my path.  Unless it's a panther.  But I consider it significant if I'm talking to someone who believes it.  Because these stimuli change their perceptions of how lucky they are.  And the more lucky we think we are, the more opportunities we take advantage of (objectively, the opportunities are all the same).

So one of the things that my friend from the first paragraph does to stay "lucky" is to seize more of the opportunities that she's presented with.  She recognizes them.  She probably even watches for them.  But she does something else too: she is literally presented with more opportunities than most people are.  I am now going to reveal this secret.

Ready?

Here we go.

Grow up.  Take on more responsibilities.  Help the people around you.  Take care of those who need it.  Work hard, be fruitful, and make babies damnit!

Having children alone makes the majority of the other problems you face somehow way more manageable.  A lot of that is perspective.

Here's an illustration that comes from Chuck Miller.  Actually, it's from Numbers in the Bible, but something about the way Chuck said it made a lot of difference in the way I saw the characters and how they ticked.  God had made Aaron the high priest and set aside his family, the Levites, and this guy Korah thought he was doing a terrible job and decided he wanted his job.  Kinda like Satan wanted God's job in Genesis.  See, the israelites were suppose to give the first fruits of their labor to the Lord, and the priests were the guys who got to reap the benefits.  They got all the power, glory, all the best food... it seemed like they were staying in five star hotels for doing very little work.  How many people do we know like that?

It's easy to see why someone who didn't have those things might aspire to gain them.  They might feel like they deserve that placement in life more than the person who actually has that placement.  Especially considering the israelites have been wandering the dessert for what... thirty years?  Doesn't seem like Aaron was doing a very good job, does it?  Korah's idea was to overthrow Aaron and just go take the promise land once and for all.

Korah and his followers and all their possessions ended up being swallowed by the earth.  Not because they wanted stuff, but because they outrightly disobeyed God.  Again, a whole other story.

ANYhow, consider this: when Aaron was called to be the high priest, he was being called to be the ONLY person who could come into the presence of God and present sacrifices of repentance on behalf of people's sins.  He had to represent everyone everywhere on behalf of them and plead for their forgiveness, among other things.  Probably he had a similar role to the modern pastor, where he did a lot of public speaking and listening to everyone's problems at all hours of the night. Remember, these guys were wandering the effing desert for fifty years living on magic bread that fell from the sky and magic water from rocks.  They had to live like minimalists most of the time, and there wasn't a lot of medical advancements made for things like leprosy. These folks had problems coming out of their asses.

You wouldn't really consider Aaron's job to be an easy one if you really looked at it.  He needed the extra blessings in life.  But then, when people only see the blessings those above them have, they get frustrated and start flinging mud.  Critics like Korah popping up only make Aaron's job harder.

The universe has a way of balancing extremes in this way: the more extreme the things you take on, the more extreme the blessings you will have to help you take them on.

I like the story of the man who visited hell and heaven.  The one where he goes to hell and sees all these people sitting around a buffet of absolutely delicious food like no one's ever smelt or tasted, but their hands were made of spoons, and their arms were long and stiff - too long to bring any food from the table back into their mouths.  Then he visited heaven, it was exactly the same, except everyone was feeding the person across the table.  I like this story because it says the only difference between heaven and hell on earth is the attitude you set for yourself toward other people.

No situation you're in is bad or good; God doesn't play with numbered dice.  He uses the ones with colours on the sides.  Each situation is merely an opportunity, and we all know what to do with opportunities, right?

The only other advice I have is not to be afraid to ask for help.  I know there's a stigma against people that complain about their problems.  I think of my other friend who manages a newspaper distribution... thing.  There are all these contracted newspaper delivery guys who work seven days a week without sick days delivering papers in the middle of the night, and the people who receive the paper - if they think of how it was delivered at all - totally take them for granted.  Or they complain if it's later than they'd like.  They're being paid for a convenience, so it's not in their job description to draw a lot of attention to themselves.  But they DO have it kinda rough occupationally.

The problem is, in a perfect world where everyone's feeding the person across the table, the person across the table first needs to realize you need fed.  If you keep your problems to yourself and don't ask for help, you're probably not going to get any.  That in and of itself is a failure to seize an opportunity.

I also know there's a stigma about asking for help because nobody wants to be seen as dependent or needy.  I'm not saying go mooch off of everyone else, and not make it worth their while in any way.  Consider this: everyone is a genius in their own personal set of perceptions.  They all have things they're good at, and they all take a lot of pride when they have the opportunity to be the hero just by doing something they're already good at anyways.  "It was nothin" they'll say.  And if you can make it worth their while, then everyone benefits.  It creates this positive feedback loop where the situations start to become greater than the sum of their parts.  That's why the golden rule exists.

It's not a perfect world.  You can't always trust everyone.  But it'll all work out if your intentions are good.  I promise.

In summery, frame each moment in a positive light, keep your eyes open to opportunities, and with great responsibility comes great power.  Don't let the devils in your head steal your joy.  You will be taken care of when you take care of others.

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? ... So do not worry, saying, "what shall we eat?" or "what shall we drink?" or "what shall we wear?" For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself."  --Matthew 6.  Da' Bible.

UNLIMITED INFINITE POSSIBILITIES!!!
--J.M. Gatewood
Probability Significator