I had never touched a cat in my life before I started volunteering at my local animal shelter. No one in my family or among my friends owned a cat. I never ran into cats aside from the occasional stray that meandered around our driveway, stared into our house and left. Sometimes, from afar, I would spy a cat slinking around behind a large window, and then it was my turn to stare. So, as far as my interactions with cats have gone, the closest has been locking eyes and turning away.
One time, I remember going on an evening walk with my mother. The night was turning milky blue, and the street lamps had suddenly turned on. As we traversed the lonely sidewalks of our empty neighborhood, my mother gasped and pointed to the other side of the street: A black cat with bright yellow eyes. She sucked in her breath through her teeth and shook her head.
Kali billi, she said, meaning “black cat” in Hindi.
I told her to relax, rolling my eyes. It didn’t matter what I said, because as I had heard several times before, my mother once again reminded me — black cats are bad luck. When we see them crossing the street, then we must go the opposite way. We continued walking on our path and the cat did, too, passing by us silently. For the next two minutes my mother continued to grimace and complain about cats. She never liked, trusted or felt comfortable around them.
I don’t like their eyes, she often said.
I imagine it was something about how uncomfortably inescapable the depths of their pupils appear. They hold a reserved and contemplative quality that even I find intimidating. Perhaps if we lingered for too long, those mystical eyes would cast a supernatural shadow onto our lives, smearing bad fortune over us. It seems that cats, who only know of prowling and purring, are capable of some unknown power.
To be perfectly clear, I don’t have a fear of cats, and I have little issue with their existence. If anything, I’m drawn toward their presence. The same way I like my personal space, I reserve some for them, too. We politely look at each other from afar and are content with this curious form of mutual respect. Yet, in the South Asian community, cats are generally considered bad luck. Indian households rarely own cats. We will feed stray dogs in India, but cats are practically never seen.
My favorite thing about superstitions like this one is that there’s no explanation. I will simply do or see or say something, and in a clipped summary, my mother will tell me this will incur bad fortune. Even if it’s something like sneezing in the car as my mother is about to pull the car out of the garage. Immediately, she will stop and groan.
Why’d you have to sneeze right this moment? Now, we have to wait a little before we can leave the house.
Obviously, my nose was itchy, Mum. You know I have allergies. Anyways, when this would happen, we would sit in the car, and she would go on her phone for a minute or so, before continuing to reverse the car out of the garage. I would ask her what did it matter if I sneezed right as we were leaving the house, and she would tell me that it’s bad luck. As usual. Apparently, my body’s natural instincts were capable of signaling impending doom for not just myself but anyone around me. I thought that the biggest threat to come from sneezing was the transmission of airborne diseases? At least, it was just sneezing and not one of my more urgent bodily instincts (that I know of … ) Countless times, I’ve asked: “Why, why, why?” Where do these superstitions come from? Why do they matter? I have no answer. I wonder what would happen if we were to see a black cat and I sneezed on our way out, all at the same time. Do two superstitions cancel each other out like double negatives? Or is the bad fortune all the more amplified? I guess I’m still waiting for my bad fortune to strike and make its point. All these unanswered questions make it hard for me to believe in superstitions, but I admit I still find them intriguing from afar.
Superstitions are little human quirks: a way to play around with our environment and devise meaning out of ordinarily meaningless things. From what I’ve observed, being superstitious is being cautious about practical and impractical things. It is a whole lot of worrying about essentially everything from cats to sneezing to timing. Basically, things that are, sometimes, uncontrollable and unavoidable. When I think about being superstitious as synonymous to being a worrywart, then I feel something shift in my sense of humor. All of a sudden, I feel a little more empathy: I, too, worry about what I cannot control.
I often stress about making mistakes. While I want to welcome and embrace them, this is difficult for me. Growing up, mistakes were sometimes held against me, and they felt more like a poor reflection on my competency rather than a teaching opportunity. My parents noted “silly mistakes” in particular, and the phrase became a trademark in our household.
Don’t make silly mistakes on your exam.
I see what you did. That was a silly mistake.
Ah, I remember doing that. I made such a silly mistake.
Be careful to avoid silly mistakes.
To this day, I loathe “silly mistakes.” They’re the type of mistakes in which you look back and quickly realize what you should or could or would have done. “Silly mistakes” are so painful because they feel easily avoidable and, at the same time, not. Life happens and, for as much as we try to control it, there will always be some stubborn thing beyond our grasp. Essentially, a “silly mistake” is always waiting to happen, and there’s little we can do to prevent it: It’s inevitable. This bothers me. I can’t exist comfortably knowing that there are invisible forces hiding from me, trying to thwart my every move. At least have the guts to look me straight in the face! From this angle, I wish that I could take superstitions more seriously. The way that I look at it, superstitions offer some sense of control over one’s fate. Believers can have some confidence that they are knowingly putting in effort to prevent misfortune: Simply don’t cross a cat on the street! On the other hand, I, as a non-believer, am less confident in my ability to ward off undesirable consequences for myself. Without some rulebook like a compilation of one-sentence superstitions, I feel as though I can barely make sense of myself and my fate.
Once, in my rush to pack my lunch and work bag, I took the 7:45 a.m. bus to my job, which is 35 minutes away. It took me 10 minutes into my commute to realize that my shift starts 20 minutes earlier than my mind led me to believe. I sulked and bounced my leg frantically, annoyed with myself. I thought about how I was going to be late for my third day of work. One of my coworkers was probably impatiently waiting for me, watching the clock and the door for my arrival. When I got off the bus, I ran across the street to the clinic. I looked around nervously, and to my surprise I learned that my anxiety was all felt in vain. I learned that the start time of my shift was flexible as long as I arrived 20 minutes before the first patient’s appointment, which I did. So, no misfortune followed my mistake. For all the stress I experienced in that 35-minute bus ride, I felt embarrassed. In my hot frenzy, I had imagined and sculpted my own misfortune as a default response to making a silly mistake. My tendency towards anxiety and pessimism reminds me of my mom’s dark attitude towards sneezing upon departure. Even though I make fun of and don’t believe in superstitions, I subconsciously assume the worst of my future, like my superstitious mother. It feels as though we are both pawns in a larger game, stuck in routine, forced into paranoia.
My fear of making mistakes traps me. It makes me freak out about and nitpick everything. While this may seem reasonable for things like being a good employee, it quickly becomes impractical when it comes to matters of less consequence.
During the times I would visit and stay home with my parents, I become panicky when my friends spontaneously. I let them know nonchalantly that I’ll confirm later that day, but I’m already feeling flushed with cortisol. I’m worrying about telling my parents, how I will commute to this hang-out, if I need to rearrange my schedule, whether I have enough money and time. Concerned with the fine details and the planning and the logistics, I stress about doing the wrong thing.
For context, my family thrives on planning. There is no such thing as impulsivity or spontaneity. Everything from matters of consequence to inconsequence must be discussed thoroughly. There must be options available to deliberate over and a rigorous group assessment of strengths, weaknesses, resources and preferences. In such a world, “silly mistakes” merely reflect a lack of oversight. So, it stresses me out when I try to manufacture a beautiful plan in utmost sophisticated fashion, and one little thread comes loose. I am in anguish over small trip ups because they make me feel incompetent. That’s why I can’t be impulsive: I am too nitpicky for my own good. I fear leaving anything up to the universe, convinced that it’s out to get me. At best, I can fool myself into believing that I am capable of outsmarting the unpredictable.
It’s difficult for me to accept that I have no sixth sense or third eye. For all my overthinking, my mind and body are just as unpredictable as that which I am trying to outsmart. Except for the weather channel (and let’s be real, even then!), it is impossible for me and anyone else to foresee anything in the future. I confess that being on edge and high-strung has fatigued me. Secretly, even a little ashamedly, I wish I could lean into my impulses from time to time. I am not afraid of black cats or other superstitions, but I am afraid that my incessant fussing over what I did and didn’t do will prevent me from really living my life. Like superstitions, worrying, I think, holds me back. It makes me hesitant to place a little faith in myself. Perhaps, if I took a chance and faced my fear of the unknown, then I could start to believe that everything turns out okay in the end.
I’ve made efforts toward becoming a little more impulsive while living alone in college. I abandon my papers and pencils and walk around campus, paying little attention to the time. If I feel like it, I walk to the ice cream shop and get a scoop, not caring that I might’ve used this $5 for groceries on another occasion or that I could have spent this hour-long excursion doing laundry. I try to let go, telling myself that everything is and will be fine. The world wasn’t created using a fancy-schmancy blueprint, hard hats and safety manuals. It came to be — randomly, suddenly, quickly — and it certainly will not fall apart if I let the leash off my brain for just a little.
I tried to do this when I was running late to work on the bus. I stopped watching the clock tick past 8 a.m. Instead, I leaned into my music and focused on the cool morning wind rustling my hair. Yeah, I was late. It was a “silly mistake” that could have been avoided, but I was not able to this time. I accepted my mistake rather than fight it, and surprisingly, I found contentment in this mindset. I looked out the window and really breathed in the air, letting myself relish the peace of being at the hands of time’s passage. When I don’t let myself worry and obsess, then I see clearly how the world forgives and smoothes over mistakes. Planning and restraint can be beautiful at the right time, but we are forever susceptible to mistakes, mishaps and shortcomings. For all our obsession with misfortune, there is such a thing as fortune! We simply tend to convolute it into something far more dooming.
I see the good fortune in superstitions on the rare occasion that they feel like waking up on the right side of the bed. After my younger brother and I fight, whether physically or verbally, my parents make us gently hit our heads together twice. Without fail, every single time. According to my parents, if we didn’t bump heads twice, then we would fight again. Sometimes, they would even hold the back of our heads and push us towards each other to get us to fulfill the condition. I’m sure this would be a nifty trick if it worked, but my brother and I still fight on occasion to this day. Our bickering is inevitable. Nevertheless, I appreciate the gesture. This is how we show how much we care for each other, to protect one another from harm. I see just how much my family tries, even if it’s futile, to create and maintain peace and happiness for ourselves.
For all my empathizing with superstitious people, my refusal to be restrained by the forces of nature is why I, ultimately, cannot say I am superstitious. I don’t believe in misfortune waiting around the corner, dying to pounce on us when our backs are turned. In fact, for the millions of slip-ups I’ve personally curated, I’m happily alive and well on the other end. However, I understand the illogical fear that superstitious people feel they cannot escape. I empathize with worrying about what we cannot foresee. Perhaps superstitions are how we attempt to make sense of the inevitable, unidentifiable and uncontrollable. Some people depend on superstitions to make their way through life trying to compensate for nature’s forces, wanting to avoid more pain and worry at all costs. Regardless of whether we believe in superstitions or not, we only want a happy ending for ourselves, and we’ll chase after it however we can. Maybe we are too critical of ourselves and our world, considering anything and everything a possible forthcoming of misfortune. Or maybe we are only trying to protect ourselves and those we love as best we can.
MiC Columnist Anushi Varma can be reached at anushiv@umich.edu.
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