Everyone of us, at some point in our lives have been a victim of superstition. While there are many around you who strongly believe in superstition, the rest choose to conveniently believe it.
You may wonder, how different are the two? One is purely based on your deepened belief system where you don't take a step ahead without looking at the star reactions and their implications on the move you make. The other is a reasoned and selectively chosen belief system, in which you choose only to decide on what you can't decide, let the stars decide for you and move ahead. The rest of them, you take a calculative approach.
While I sat down to list out the many approaches we have in our day-to-day life today, I failed to classify them into categories of Real versus the Convenient. Simply because, the reason to classify oscillates between the two depending on a number of external reasons and approaches that may seem right to me but wrong to someone else. Hence, I just decided to understand the nuances of anything said against any system or religion and claim these to be just my view-points.
Let me start off with the most common belief that everyone has - The Horoscope match of a suitable alliance before moving ahead. Most of us might be aware that this is the most and the crucial part of any prospective alliance consummating into Holy Matrimony. Someone decides that some complex yesteryear algorithm reading into the star positions of the boy and the girl to deduce if its an alliance worth taking forward. What happens to the people from the same religion, who are in love but their Horoscope don't match? What happens to an inter-religion couple? Do they give up on the person they love or they go ahead and take the plunge and risk their lives, their partner's life and the relationship or have a workaround to temporary given solutions? Validation point or no validation point, this aspect depends on what you choose to believe and let go of the other.
The next thought that came into my mind is the direction in which you sleep. They say some directions in which your head rests are not suitable for your success and prosperity or is a sign of a bad omen. Now, let's take a one case of an insomniac like me (I would limit the examples to me, as it's a lot safer). To be able to have a sound sleep on many of the nights, I will not be able to justify which direction gives me a peaceful sleep. I change innumerable places and directions just to fall asleep. My prosperity primarily depends on the sleep I get the night before. So I can't really make sense out of this one.
The other thought or might as well say the discussion that came to my mind was when I was having this conversation with a friend of mine on a rainy day. I just happened to mention to her that I feel something is going to be terribly wrong. Although, the part of something being terribly wrong is yet to be experienced (God please give me strength while that happens!!), but what took me by surprise is she mentioning to me that I have such feelings because I have too many moles on my face. Failing to comprehend, I requested her to enlighten me. She confidently states that, the more moles you have on your face, indicates that there would be more problems in future. Hence, it would be a good idea I get rid of them. Now, the only immediate reaction I could give her was, I would get rid of the moles to enhance my beauty and have a spotless face. If eradicating moles, would eradicate the problems in life, then that would be the first thing anyone would spend their hard earned money on. Isn't it?
There are so many such conversations or debates that I have with my friends or with my own mind. Sometimes, unintentionally you fall prey to these superstitious behaviors that you can not completely do away with. But it would be more apt, if we were informed and learned about our superstitious beliefs and not drive our life and survival only based in these.
You may wonder, how different are the two? One is purely based on your deepened belief system where you don't take a step ahead without looking at the star reactions and their implications on the move you make. The other is a reasoned and selectively chosen belief system, in which you choose only to decide on what you can't decide, let the stars decide for you and move ahead. The rest of them, you take a calculative approach.
While I sat down to list out the many approaches we have in our day-to-day life today, I failed to classify them into categories of Real versus the Convenient. Simply because, the reason to classify oscillates between the two depending on a number of external reasons and approaches that may seem right to me but wrong to someone else. Hence, I just decided to understand the nuances of anything said against any system or religion and claim these to be just my view-points.
Let me start off with the most common belief that everyone has - The Horoscope match of a suitable alliance before moving ahead. Most of us might be aware that this is the most and the crucial part of any prospective alliance consummating into Holy Matrimony. Someone decides that some complex yesteryear algorithm reading into the star positions of the boy and the girl to deduce if its an alliance worth taking forward. What happens to the people from the same religion, who are in love but their Horoscope don't match? What happens to an inter-religion couple? Do they give up on the person they love or they go ahead and take the plunge and risk their lives, their partner's life and the relationship or have a workaround to temporary given solutions? Validation point or no validation point, this aspect depends on what you choose to believe and let go of the other.
The next thought that came into my mind is the direction in which you sleep. They say some directions in which your head rests are not suitable for your success and prosperity or is a sign of a bad omen. Now, let's take a one case of an insomniac like me (I would limit the examples to me, as it's a lot safer). To be able to have a sound sleep on many of the nights, I will not be able to justify which direction gives me a peaceful sleep. I change innumerable places and directions just to fall asleep. My prosperity primarily depends on the sleep I get the night before. So I can't really make sense out of this one.
The other thought or might as well say the discussion that came to my mind was when I was having this conversation with a friend of mine on a rainy day. I just happened to mention to her that I feel something is going to be terribly wrong. Although, the part of something being terribly wrong is yet to be experienced (God please give me strength while that happens!!), but what took me by surprise is she mentioning to me that I have such feelings because I have too many moles on my face. Failing to comprehend, I requested her to enlighten me. She confidently states that, the more moles you have on your face, indicates that there would be more problems in future. Hence, it would be a good idea I get rid of them. Now, the only immediate reaction I could give her was, I would get rid of the moles to enhance my beauty and have a spotless face. If eradicating moles, would eradicate the problems in life, then that would be the first thing anyone would spend their hard earned money on. Isn't it?
There are so many such conversations or debates that I have with my friends or with my own mind. Sometimes, unintentionally you fall prey to these superstitious behaviors that you can not completely do away with. But it would be more apt, if we were informed and learned about our superstitious beliefs and not drive our life and survival only based in these.
