Superstitions creating Conflicts in between Generations

Last week I told you about a family friend who has just had a baby. She did not want to leave the hospital on a Saturday due to a superstition that it brings bad luck. She was discharged on Friday and could return home with the baby. Yesterday Ramona went to visit her again and talked with her about such belief. Back home, we had a conversation about this and similar superstition and the problem of generations in between a changing belief.

Ramona told our friend that she had not immediately understood why they did not want to leave the hospital on a Saturday, especially as she had not known that our friend believes such things. She answered that she had not believed in it three years ago, when her first daughter had been born. In that time they were in the hospital, too, and doctors told them on Saturday that everything was alright and that they were fine to leave. So they did. After they had reached home however, their newborn daughter started getting warm and then hot, obviously not feeling good and crying. She got high fever and they had to call the doctor. When she told this on phone to her mother, the answer was ‘Honey, you should not have left the hospital on a Saturday!’

So you see how such superstition survives! If someone does not act accordingly and something bad happens, he will be the one to blame. Maybe this is even how this superstition started! Someone came home on a Saturday and a catastrophe happened in the family. Had he come home on a Tuesday, people would believe you should not come home on Tuesdays.

I am a very bluntly speaking person and my friends know that I would still insist that it is only a coincidence and has nothing to do with the day of the week. However when your complete surrounding insists on believing such things, it is very difficult to have a different opinion and that is what many people experience nowadays.

Try to place yourself in that situation: your parents, aunts and uncles, those with whom you have lived your whole life long believe something that you think is only superstition. Something that you know does not exist in other, more modern parts of the world. In big cities in your own country nobody believes it anymore! But you are here, in a small town or even in the countryside. You want to be modern and tell your elders that you don’t believe in it. You have discussions, maybe even arguments and fights about it. You know, they are worrying and they want the best according to what they believe. For them it worked, they lived their life according to this and it was not bad, was it? But their belief is nonsense in your eyes! You don’t want to hurt them or maybe even lose their support but you don’t want to follow old patterns, giving up on things just for the sake of not arguing anymore! What to do?

Some people give up and just go along in order to keep peace. Some people reach a compromise where both sides agree not to go to extremes, keeping some of the traditional elements and maybe following also some superstition because it makes the other one happy but refusing the most complicated and senseless behaviour. And there are those who completely refuse everything. For them it sometimes means more effort or even struggle because they decided to take another way. It can be a difficult way but it might be the one with most peace of mind because you did what was right to your mind and heart.

If you are in a situation where the belief of your elders and your own ideas of how you live your life clash, I wish you can stay true to yourself and manage with as little arguments and problems as possible. Sometimes you won’t be able to avoid a heated discussion and making your point very clear. In the end however those who love you will realize that your love is more important than old and ridiculous superstition. Time has changed and knowledge and science has progressed.

At this point I just want to thank my own family, my parents and grandmother, again for being open, tolerant and flexible!