Supersticious minds?

I thought about writing a blog about how England were playing so well in the Ashes yesterday, all about the way the team had pulled together and shone and so many individuals had stepped up when needed. I was also going to write about how the Aussies were nothing to be scared of any more.

I didn't, which now seems like a decent idea. The reason I didn't was superstition, I didn't want to jinx the rest of the test, although now I think I might as well have written it.

Yes, I'm superstitious, live with it. I once said hello to a magpie, as I do every time, while walking along with a mate of mine. He looked at me as if I was mad and asked what I had just done. On explaining he was incredulous: “But you're the one with a science degree? How can you be superstitious?”

He's right, I do have a background in science, I did physics and maths at A-level and I have a reasonably useless degree in automotive engineering sitting at home gathering dust. And yet still I can't help but retain a superstitious mind. I find myself automatically breaking off in the middle of a sentence to say “hello Magpie, how's your family” whenever I see one. The sight of two together makes me feel better about the rest of the day (a black cat crossing my path makes me positively delirious about the future).

So how can this be? How on earth can years of learning how the world is only affected by physics make me think that simple things like that might make a difference?

The simple answer is I don't know, all I do know is that they make me feel better. It's an unexplainable world most of the time, scientists have figured a lot of things out, but there's still a lot we do not understand. Even some of the things we do know seem incomprehensible to us. The fact that electrons can disappear and reappear somewhere else. The fact that if we know where one is we cannot know how fast it is going and vice-versa. It's very, very odd and at the same time very wonderful.

So it's comforting in a world of unknowns to have something like that in your life. It's a routine, one you cling on to and remains constant no matter what happens. The next time a group of you are watching a sports match and one of the group says something like “we've won this now” I can guarantee that the rest of you will shush him. It's human nature.

It's the uncertainties in life that make it more exciting sometimes, but a lot of the time they make you nervous. You don't know what's to come, and it could be bad. So we compensate by having comforting superstitions. It's like wanting to be close to your parents after something bad has happened even if you happen to be grown up. In your head you know they can't protect you fully or make things better, but it's comfortable, and they make you feel better.

So the next time you automatically do something strangely superstitious, or see someone doing just that, remember that you do the same without knowing it. You do certain things in a certain way because that's the way you know, the way you feel comfortable with. Someone with superstitions is doing it for the same reason you put your pants on before your socks, it's what they've always done and what they will continue to do.

It's just human, hello magpie how's your family? Nature, and in reality, in a cold world it's a nice comforting thing to see.

(This blog was sponsored by Ian Brown's song F.E.A.R)