Traditions, rituals, good luck charm, superstitions, whatever you choose to call them they all come from the same central idea. Something that you do to bring luck and or positivity onto yourself and/or the act you will be partaking in.
A lot of times when you hear the word superstitions, we think of something like keeping garlic around to ward off vampires, or even like witches and voodoo and all that silliness.
But superstitions come in a variety of forms.
For a lot of athletes it's the order in which they put their gear on, or a pregame handshake with one of their teammates. Some people make sure they don't split the poll when walking past one. Or maybe it's the classics, like not stepping on the cracks (because you'll break your mother's back!).
The real question is, is there any real factuality behind this interesting rituals? Will you really be cursed with seven years of bad luck if you walk under a ladder or see a black cat? Will you really break your beloved mother's back by stepping on that crack over there? At one point we definitely all thought that we would. Even so, to this day some of us still stick by a lot of these superstitions. Especially if we don't do those things and it goes wrong, then we definitely won't ever not do them again.
But where did these crazy beliefs' come from? Why do we believe in them so strongly?
It seems like these beliefs we have come from the habitual routineness of it all. The mere fact that it is something that we have done so many times and were taught to do growing up that we don't really know any better. It's very similar to the way people have a morning routine. It is something that has just been passed along from family member to family member.
But where it really gets interesting is when you start to see the little seeds that you or the people around you have planted in each other. You look around and notice that you've picked up on your friends ways and your friends have picked up on yours. You notice that they now won't spilt poles, or maybe you noticed that now every time before they work out they do this little jump thing, or maybe they just finally started believing in some timeless classics.
Some people, actually probably a lot of people will probably call those of us who live our lives with these superstitions or rituals childish and unnecessary, but are we really? Why do the things that I believe in make me childish and unnecessary? You don't tell a child Santa isn't real, or someone of faith that God isn't real because that is their beliefs. That is how they live their lives with them, just as you live your life with yours.
Superstitions, rituals, and traditions are just the same. I do them because I believe in them and they have a certain or special meaning to me. No matter how small and useless they may seem to those around me, they mean everything to me. Things don't feel right if I don't do or follow them, and from that point on it's as if nothing else will feel or go right because I didn't start off right. I don't think anyone really knows how these quirky little things come to be in our lives. Yes, we get them from our parents in a lot of cases, but what about before them? Their parents? But what about where they got it from? Could it be some traumatic experience that triggered some sort of response as a coping mechanism just to keep your sanity? Or maybe we're just that weird.
