I am just another muddled up specimen of the Generation-X, a mix of tradition and modernity. I am superstitious by convenience.
Let me come to the point, for all the times that we bow while crossing a place of worship, to keeping our fingers crossed during a tense situation, to throwing a stone to ward off the negativity when a cat crosses our path or even to the forwarding of the banal 'luck' mails and many more. The base behind all these is just superstition.
Some of you would not agree, simply because you don't realize that to some extent we all are slightly orthodox. In reality, I should say that we all are superstitious. But until the time the recourse is innocuous and effortless that means it does not involve any physical/financial liability or is not completely fatuous.
But have you ever wondered why are we superstitious? According to me, the basis is either fear or incentive. Let me elaborate; remember the time when our folks used to scold us for running around them, while they were sitting. They told us (at least, mine did), that it is a bad omen and stopped doing so, because of fear. Then there were hoards of similar stories, such as breaking the mirror, spilling the salt, walking under a ladder etc. But come to think of it, all these are situations which have a high propensity to a mishap, wastage or are simply too irritating to be tolerated! So, our parents were not trying to ward off the omen, but the ruckus they expected us to make.
The second clause is incentive, who would know better than us, the value of incentives, with the Yearly appraisal right around the corner! All of us have a general tendency to perform much better when rightly motivated. This motivation is nothing but incentive - social, moral or financial. Picking up a very neat example from 'Freakonomics', it said that the US Government decided to levy 15% extra tax on cigarette manufacturing companies. That is a negative financial incentive. Secondly, it asked all public places to ban smoking. That is a social incentive and thirdly, it announced that the Terror outfits in Afghanistan were minting money by illegal tobacco production. Now that is a moral incentive. These three incentives in totality tried to cover all the weaknesses of the human mind.
Superstition gives us hope to make the situation better. The inane things when compared to the ‘might-be-possible’ results seem really small. So, if you are positively motivated then your chances of delivering better results are accentuated. And if you do better, you are all the more motivated for the next time.
But is religion also based on the above two? Just give it a thought!!
And while you are thinking about this on your way home, if you spot a magpie, don't forget to follow the 'bachpan ka ritual',
"One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret, never to be told
Eight for a wish
Nine for a kiss
Ten for a bird you must not miss.”
Just to tell you that I still follow it,that too quite religiously.
Disclaimer: I am superstitious, T & C applied.
