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by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.
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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

A Wellness Take On Superstition in General and Friday, The 13th, In Particular!

Friday February 13, 2004

Greetings and good wishes. Happy Friday, the 13th! If you are worried about having bad luck today due to a morbid, irrational fear of the conjunction of the sixth day of the week and the number 13, chances are pretty good that you are an idiot! Well, at least "a silly dilly," as my young daughter used to exclaim. Sorry, but in my senior years I seem to have less patience with irrationality, madness and total nonsense than I used to, and I never had much forbearance with these things to begin with. Unless, of course, they were being demonstrated by yours truly--then I was more compassionate and understanding.

There is a name for people who worry about today, that is, Friday the 13th, thanks to the self-promotional genius of one Donald Dossey, a psychotherapist who specializes in treating phobias. The name is "paraskevidekatriaphobia" and I won't grace it with attempts at pronunciation. The term is NOT in the Merriam-Webster or other dictionaries, so why accept it before the language police do so? Whatever you call it, there are 21 million folks in this country who get freaked about this old superstition. Go figure.

Well, this is not the first bit of evidence that Americans are lunatics. I thought most demonstrated pure lunacy by getting all bent out of shape and doing a freak-out overreaction to the Janet Jackson boob stunt during the Super Bowl. What's the big deal about a human breast? Do people think the sight of a breast brings bad luck, or what? That was just crazy. For this reason, it seems more important than ever that I retain my sanity. After all, someone has to do it.

Maybe superstition should be considered a form of insanity. Let's have a look at this phenomenon, starting with fears about bad luck on Friday, the 13th. Did you know this is said to be THE most widespread of all superstitions? There are several definitions of superstition, such as, "an irrational or nonscientific belief in the existence of certain powers operant in the world, with positive or ill (usually ill) effects, and therefore a concomitant belief in the counter-effects of amulets, tokens and such, and the power of certain actions (or avoidance of some actions, such as not walking under a ladder) to diminish or deflect."

The number of superstitions is unlimited, as anyone familiar with the diverse rituals of professional athletes before a game knows. Some of the most common superstitions involve a rabbit's foot, black cat, walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, a horseshoe, blowing out all candles on a birthday cake, a chicken's wishbone, etc., ad nauseam. While somewhat entertaining and usually harmless, they do not reinforce a practice of thinking critically.

Why, in a few words, are all superstitions unwise, irrational and injurious to personal responsibility and one's chances to adopt and sustain wellness mindsets? Robert Ingersoll, "the magnificent infidel" of the Civil War era and friend of Mark Twain, addressed all manner of controversial topics from a critical thinking perspective, including religion, personal freedoms, women's rights, the arts, joy in life, gratitude and much more. He summarized the characteristics of superstition, in part, as follows:

To believe in spite of evidence or without evidence.
To account for one mystery by another.
To disregard the relation between cause and effect.
To believe that mind created and controls matter.
To believe in miracles, spells and charms, in dreams and prophecies.
To believe in the supernatural.

In summary, Ingersoll showed that superstition is "the child of ignorance and the mother of misery. Now, I hope this will convince you that it's safe to go out today and that you have nothing to worry about, at least not due to the date. So, look on the bright side and be well.

Domain: mental
Subdomain: effective decisions

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