LJ Idol Week Six
"Don't step on a crack or you'll break your mother's back."
How many times did we all hear something like that while we were growing up? I certainly remember trying to avoid stepping on cracks and performing other literal manifestations of my temporary superstitions, like putting my right shoe on before my left shoe and tossing spilled salt over my left shoulder. (Heck, I still put my right shoe on first, out of sheer force of habit.)
Of course, it didn't take me too long to figure out that stepping on a sidewalk crack would not bring my mother's world crashing down upon my family's head. Especially since my mother was a strong person who didn't even cry when she was run over by a car while crossing the street on her ninth birthday.
Decades later, though, I find that we all practice lots of little rituals every day to avoid the ever-present threats of doom. We take our vitamins and brush our teeth, fret about the chemicals in our water and the calories in our food, get our exercise, save our pennies and practice our job skills. We feel armored up, ready to "do battle" with the world, and we inevitably look down upon people who haven't taken as many pains to prepare as we have.
And then the next step is: Blame the victim!
Cancer? That person "must" have been a smoker, or ate bad stuff, or didn't do the breast self-exams. Heart attack? Couch potato! Out of a job? Lazy bum! If we can't say these things to the victims' faces, we certainly say them online in thousands or millions of comments.
What burns me is that sometimes these bad things happen to people who have done the good stuff, the protective rituals, and it wasn't "enough." One friend had a vague discomfort in her midsection that turned out to be a rare form of primary liver cancer. She doesn't smoke and wasn't an alcoholic. Her only risk factor was her humanity. My dentist also had a vague pain in his back a few years ago, but nobody stepped on a crack -- he had a tumor on one of his kidneys.
But, oh, these people "must" have ingested something wrong. Or whatever.
I had a friend who discovered he had high blood pressure and a congenital heart problem. So he cut out the salt, hit the walking paths, and had the heart fixed. And something went BOOM in his brain, so he's dead. Someone else I know who enjoys an active lifestyle, doesn't have excess fat on her body, just had the same kind of hemorrhagic stroke, although she is alert and expected to recover.
Every person I've known who was killed while riding a motorcycle was wearing a helmet. My high school principal lost control and went off a cliff. My mother's 79-year-old friend and her son were T-boned at an intersection when someone else blew through a stop sign.
One friend, age 62, keeps telling me that he must prepare for a long retirement because his relatives lived into their 90s. I peer at him over my glasses and remind him that some of the 9/11 victims must have had longevity genes too.
We humans with our pattern-seeking brains just can't wrap our heads around the randomness of the universe. A stray cosmic ray, a haphazard mutation in a single cell, a moment of inattention ... some things just happen, and there is no "why."
This entry was originally posted at http://luscious-purple.dreamwidth.org/152551.html. Please feel free to comment either here or there.
How many times did we all hear something like that while we were growing up? I certainly remember trying to avoid stepping on cracks and performing other literal manifestations of my temporary superstitions, like putting my right shoe on before my left shoe and tossing spilled salt over my left shoulder. (Heck, I still put my right shoe on first, out of sheer force of habit.)
Of course, it didn't take me too long to figure out that stepping on a sidewalk crack would not bring my mother's world crashing down upon my family's head. Especially since my mother was a strong person who didn't even cry when she was run over by a car while crossing the street on her ninth birthday.
Decades later, though, I find that we all practice lots of little rituals every day to avoid the ever-present threats of doom. We take our vitamins and brush our teeth, fret about the chemicals in our water and the calories in our food, get our exercise, save our pennies and practice our job skills. We feel armored up, ready to "do battle" with the world, and we inevitably look down upon people who haven't taken as many pains to prepare as we have.
And then the next step is: Blame the victim!
Cancer? That person "must" have been a smoker, or ate bad stuff, or didn't do the breast self-exams. Heart attack? Couch potato! Out of a job? Lazy bum! If we can't say these things to the victims' faces, we certainly say them online in thousands or millions of comments.
What burns me is that sometimes these bad things happen to people who have done the good stuff, the protective rituals, and it wasn't "enough." One friend had a vague discomfort in her midsection that turned out to be a rare form of primary liver cancer. She doesn't smoke and wasn't an alcoholic. Her only risk factor was her humanity. My dentist also had a vague pain in his back a few years ago, but nobody stepped on a crack -- he had a tumor on one of his kidneys.
But, oh, these people "must" have ingested something wrong. Or whatever.
I had a friend who discovered he had high blood pressure and a congenital heart problem. So he cut out the salt, hit the walking paths, and had the heart fixed. And something went BOOM in his brain, so he's dead. Someone else I know who enjoys an active lifestyle, doesn't have excess fat on her body, just had the same kind of hemorrhagic stroke, although she is alert and expected to recover.
Every person I've known who was killed while riding a motorcycle was wearing a helmet. My high school principal lost control and went off a cliff. My mother's 79-year-old friend and her son were T-boned at an intersection when someone else blew through a stop sign.
One friend, age 62, keeps telling me that he must prepare for a long retirement because his relatives lived into their 90s. I peer at him over my glasses and remind him that some of the 9/11 victims must have had longevity genes too.
We humans with our pattern-seeking brains just can't wrap our heads around the randomness of the universe. A stray cosmic ray, a haphazard mutation in a single cell, a moment of inattention ... some things just happen, and there is no "why."
This entry was originally posted at http://luscious-purple.dreamwidth.org/152551.html. Please feel free to comment either here or there.