If you’re reading this, then I guess the answer is, thankfully, no.
I was all set to write a thoroughly tongue-in-cheek blog about this weekend’s “rapture” hoo ha. Yes, it’s the end of the world – again. And I was having a swell time in the shower – where I do all my best thinking — imagining all the funny quips I could write about the apocalypse etc etc. But then when I was towelling off I started to reconsider. “No, maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” I thought. “Mr D has a business trip this week in a decidedly dodgy part of the world, and I better not make fun, just in case.” Well, well, well. So much for my place in the rational world.
But to be honest, I’m full of superstitious rituals that I adhere to “just in case.” Every time I take off in an airplane, I close my eyes and say a little chant of safe passage to myself that I learned a decade ago in a yoga class. There have been plenty of times when I’ve spoken out loud about something that I was hoping might happen, only to joke about wanting to swing a chicken around my head to ward off the evil eye. Okay, I don’t actually do it, but I do always make the same joke. So who am I to ridicule the poor bastards who believed the end was nigh?
We live in a world that is out of control, in many ways. So much is happening to us and around us now that we don’t understand, it’s not surprising that so many of us are grabbing whatever tentative chance for an explanation or control that we can find. Stevie Wonder, one of my favourite philosphers, proclaimed “Superstition ain’t the way,” and of course he’s right. But that doesn’t stop us from performing our rituals, believing the unbelievable. Did I think the world was going to end this weekend? Of course not. But I won’t claim that there isn’t a host of other things that I believe, or am too afraid to completely disbelieve. I come from a culture that is firmly steeped in superstition. I carry the sound of my grandmothers’ pooh poohs and tsk tsks forever in my ears. So although I may not believe in the rapture or the imminent end of the world, I’ll keep saying my little chant to myself until Mr D gets home.
But what’s a chant without music? Here you go……
I wasn’t aware the end was supposed to be nigh until I saw something on the tv.
I’m more superstitious than I used to be, but only with a couple of things, flying, magpies (which is a pain as there are lots of them living in a tree near our house).
Love the Ghostbusters theme.
Sue – I know exactly what you mean! I read a comic, rather blasphemous piece at a flash event at Brighton fringe last night – and you know, through the gin haze, there was a frisson of ‘ooo-er, what if… thunder on the left’ etc. Or, ‘Ah, maybe these sins get stored up and slam-dunked in your path when you arrive at the pearly gates, hastily polishing your tarnished halo…’
I wonder if, if you have any sense of things other than solid reality, susperstition has to be part of it, in all seriousness?
I find it difficult to completely disregard superstition. I’m fairly ratioNAl usually, but I do think there’s some things out there we don’t understand – at least, not yet!
When most writing contests required entries be sent by post, I used to kiss the envelope before dropping it in the mail slot. I’m not sure if it helped.
I’m a committed fence sitter on most of these things and try to keep all sides happy just in case. I do think that in this writing game, luck plays a BIG part of it so we are all a bit superstitious because of that.