There is superstition in the current generation too

Of course, the title is an obvious fact. But this post is about how I had forgotten about it.

I was in the gym resting between sets when a gym acquaintance came close by and we exchanged greetings. He told me that he had missed the gym for the last week because he had a bad case of diarrhoea that made him sick. Then he said something that shocked me. He said, “I was eating out something and I think that someone saw me.”

That confused me. What did he mean? I gave a quizzical look. He explained, “Some people have bad ways of looking at others. They can’t see the good happening to others.” Then it clicked to me. He was referencing to the superstition that when other people look at you with evil intentions, that has an adverse effect on you.

I nodded and smiled and did not go ahead to contradict him and tell him I don’t believe in such nonsense. I don’t know him well enough to start dumping my thoughts on him.

But that gave me something to think about. That guy is probably younger than me. And he has such ideas going around in his head. I do not believe in such superstitions. That made me have a rosy outlook toward the world that like me almost everyone else does not believe in superstitions. Sure, there are some exceptions but I always envisioned them from the previous generations like old people. But this was a wake-up call for me, a reminder that I don’t understand the world well enough and I should set aside my glasses of personal perspectives and try to see the world as it really it without my biases.

So here is a note to me. There is going to be some form of superstition running around in people’s heads for a long time. Sure, they are on the decline. But not eliminated. Even decades later, you are going to find young people who will have some poisonous beliefs in their mind without any supporting scientific evidence which will have adverse effects on their and other lives as well.

Also, if such beliefs really were true, then the world would have been a whole different place with very different rules.