Crystal balls. Tarot cards. The stars. Psychics. When I wonder what the future holds I think about these options.
If there is one thing I sometimes feel I could do without, it is the disarming feeling of uncertainty at the start of the year. Not knowing what the future holds can cause anxiety for those who are not fond of surprises, pleasant or otherwise.
When I was younger one of my schoolmates claimed she could read palms and tell the number of children one would have and their sexes. I remember having my palm read, but I forget the simplistic prediction that was made.
Later another self-proclaimed palm reader, still from school, advertised her services but though I was tempted to have mine read for fun, this second time I opted out.
Pupils may offer to tell the future if only to create an exciting pastime in the humdrum existence of school life. But there are people out there who have made foretelling the future their ultimate purpose in life. They claim to have a gift of deeper-than-normal intuition that enables them to sense things that ordinary beings like myself cannot perceive.
They offer us the gift of peeking into our futures so we can prepare for it the best way we know. And these fortunetellers are not in want of customers: those who are too curious to let the future unfold on its own seek their services.
But even the most skeptical get inquisitive once in a while and the possibility of extrasensory perception entices one to know what lies uncovered in the cloak of darkness ahead.
In retrospect, even though I do not believe in fortunetelling, there are things I wish I had known in advance before they happened.
For instance if I had known that boy would be a jerk I would have stayed away and saved myself from so much pain. And if I had known I would end up on the writer’s bench I would have taken my random scribbling more seriously and slowed down to perfect the skill.
These are just the mild cases that come to mind. But I do not reflect with regret because I turned out okay, perhaps because of rather than in spite of those events.
But there are more serious events that make one think: “If I had known this would happen I would or would not have….” Grisly accidents that end fatally come to mind.
On the other end is the second-guessing that accompanies a missed opportunity that was lying right beneath your nose. All you had to do was to reach out and seize it but you let it pass by. Later when you think about it you wish you had known what a good deal it would be and you would have acted differently.
The unpredictability of life can be unnerving, especially when one thinks of the negative outcomes that could have been avoided, or the opportunities that could have been embraced with foreknowledge.
Yet I find that even when I don’t know what the future holds things still turn out okay. Another consolation is my belief that nothing is set in stone - except self-fulfilling prophecies.
What the cards say lie in store may never come to pass; and if it does, it could be because you believed the cards so much as to let the prediction control you like a puppet and conspire with your thoughts and actions to make the prediction come true. How paralyzing!
For now I am content with playing around with the inaccurate apps on social networking sites, that promise to tell me how my life will turn out, just for the fun of it. But for some reason the result they give me is almost always inconsistent with the type of person that I am.
That is why I am better off experiencing this uncertain life without obstructing forecasts to derail my march to the unknown.
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