Friday the 13th

Today is the 13th of April, it also happens to be Friday the 13th and the very concept of that day seems to drive the superstitious among us absolutely batty. Now I have been known to be a bit superstitious from time to time. In high school I had a 'lucky shirt' that I would wear to class on the days I had an exam. Every time I wore it, the exam would go better than expected and then I'd feel less anxiety. That didn't mean that I didn't blow off studying and sit there with full confidence in only my shirt; that would have been ridiculous. For me, I think it was part psychological and partly the shirt. I even believe that the power of the shirt was corrupted one day during the summer when two of my friends and I were going for lunch from our summer jobs. Being the only one with a car I drove us to the mall for a quick bite and then we grabbed tickets for an evening movie. During the course of conversation we all realized that we were each wearing our respective lucky shirts and because of this, the powers of the universe were too much and the positive energy of the shirts was nullified and reversed. Consequence? My car wouldn't start and it refused to start for the rest of the evening. We had to come back and get a jump for it from my Dad in the evening.

So does that mean that I lost faith in the power of a lucky shirt? Absolutely not! It became a case of trial and error until I landed upon the new lucky shirt which helped get me through college. I still have it to this day though I keep it in storage for a special occasion. So what's this got to do with Friday the 13th you ask? Well, it's just one example in some of the crazy inane things many of us tend to do when we are seeking to have good fortunes. Whether it's getting up on only one side of the bed or putting the right foot down first; wearing no socks or two pairs of socks; carrying a rabbit's foot or any number of things that we do out of no other reason other than wanting to have good luck, we exhibit this want to be lucky. Now some argue that we each make our own luck and that is true to an extent too.

Had I not studied for some of those exams, even if I had worn my 'lucky shirt' it wouldn't have made one bit of difference. If I don't know the material at all, I can't expect a piece of stitched cotton to suddenly fill my brain. So then why do it? Why keep up with these silly little things? I attended a lecture last year by a gentleman named Dr. Dhabolkar from India who was seeking to find an answer. It turns out that in villages and cities around India there are people who establish themselves as 'seers' or 'mystics' and through one or two acts of faith, they end up convincing people of their powers beyond those of normal people. The natural reaction for many is to look upon these people with reverence and utter belief. The consequence of that is that many people use this power for negative purposes. Dr. Dhabolkar related how some villagers had basically tortured their fellow villagers to determine if the drought affecting their area was due to that person's negative energy and 'spells'.

It sounds insane to us to think that someone could believe that a person could be responsibile for a drought simply through negative energy. I mean I grant you, humans as a race are probably messing around with the environment enough as a whole to cause major climatic changes, but to blame it on one person? That's just too much. But when we see something or hear someone who says or does the things we want to see and hear, we tend to believe them. We tend to check our brains at the door and accept things as signs and follow them blindly. We all need to have faith, but it's important that we determine where that faith is being kept and with whom. One could say that that means that God and religion can be interpreted as blind faith. I tend to think the opposite. God and religion can do only so much. It's like the lucky shirt, you can wear it but if you don't do your end of the work, it won't matter. Similarly, you can pray all you want, but if you don't take the effort to make a bit of change then it won't make a difference.

So today is a day when many people will take extra precautions not to bring themselves bad luck. They'll avoid stepping on a crack (to avoid breaking their mama's back), they'll not let a black cat cross their path, they won't walk underneath a ladder, they won't pick up coins that are face down, they won't do a lot of things. And in the course of all this anxiety about this one day, they'll miss out on a lot of things as well. The 13th is just like any other day but it's got a fairly bad reputation. I mean for one thing, don't go camping at Camp Crystal Lake. After years of murders occuring on Friday the 13th at the same place year after year, you would think that people would get it in their heads that there's something non-kosher about the joint and avoid it like the plague! Still, I guess you could say that they had faith that nothing bad would happen to them.

Treat today like a normal day. I mean there's nothing wrong with the 13th. Look at Caesar, he was assassinated on the 15th of March yet the 15th is treated with absolute nonchalance. Caesar was warned by a seer, a known seer because Mark Anthony referred to the seer as a seer! This guy had forewarning against the plot by the senators to assassinate Caesar and despite that he didn't take heed. So now the naysayers will say that we need to believe in saints and mystics and leave all else to fate. I say that Caesar was like the rest of us, a believer in his own fate and destiny and though he could avoid death, it was his time. There's nothing wrong with the 13th other than having a bad reputation. If you drop a mirror today....oops; you'll have to buy a new one, not fret over it for seven years.