The month of magical thinking
I have always engaged in magical thinking. When I was a child, and couldn't sleep at night, my door had to be open at a very precise angle to appease the monsters in the closet. In my adulthood, my magical thinking has taken on different proportions. Before a recent surgery I thought, "If S. shows up in class today, I know the procedure will go well this afternoon." My logical mind would know this thinking to be ridiculous and impossible (S.'s showing up, or not, truly has no bearing on my surgery), but the thought shows up anyway.
According to Wikipedia (linked to above) what I practice is actually called quasi-magical thinking. True magical thinkers believe that the associations that they come up with, the connections of which are logical in only the most far-fetched scenarios, are more then tenuous. For example, if S. does not show up to class, the surgery will definitively go terrible. As a quasi-, I think this way, have some emotional response to the outcome, but know that it is illogical.
Being sick exacerbated this habit of mine (it could, too, be called a superstitious nature). If I attend to every email in my inbox, I will feel strong enough to get off of the couch. If there is a funny video posted on Facebook, then I will not be too nauseous to eat. I'm hoping that the act of knowing something is crazy exempts the person themselves, ie me, from being crazy.
In this place of increased magic (what a nice way to think about it...) I received an email asking if I were interested in a charm from a company called Energy Muse Jewelry. I got the "Health" one. It arrived, outrageously quickly considering it came from California, last Friday. I fingered it this morning, wondering if these kinds of things really can be talismans, if magical thinking, done the right way, can bring about the magic you need.
My mom saw it and asked what it was. When I told her she said, "What? To make your keys healthy?" Mommala... that's far too logical. Sometimes, maybe, it's not that the object itself, or the magical thought you have, can actually fix anything. But a belief in something can.
According to Wikipedia (linked to above) what I practice is actually called quasi-magical thinking. True magical thinkers believe that the associations that they come up with, the connections of which are logical in only the most far-fetched scenarios, are more then tenuous. For example, if S. does not show up to class, the surgery will definitively go terrible. As a quasi-, I think this way, have some emotional response to the outcome, but know that it is illogical.
Being sick exacerbated this habit of mine (it could, too, be called a superstitious nature). If I attend to every email in my inbox, I will feel strong enough to get off of the couch. If there is a funny video posted on Facebook, then I will not be too nauseous to eat. I'm hoping that the act of knowing something is crazy exempts the person themselves, ie me, from being crazy.
In this place of increased magic (what a nice way to think about it...) I received an email asking if I were interested in a charm from a company called Energy Muse Jewelry. I got the "Health" one. It arrived, outrageously quickly considering it came from California, last Friday. I fingered it this morning, wondering if these kinds of things really can be talismans, if magical thinking, done the right way, can bring about the magic you need.
