Tempting Fate

I don't believe in fate, I have God as a more sane replacement concept!

Today I was going to reflect on a certain idea, then I was put to the test while writing... which changed the words before they reached the page.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, let's start at the beginning.

Yesterday I was watching this on TV, and one secondary character said the strangest thing.

She was planning to get married, and said that according to her mother, she shouldn't have kept the reciepts. But she kept them all, the caterer's reciept, the chapel payment slip, the honeymoon reservations... everything. Her mother said that's "tempting fate".

It's like if you believe that things will go wrong (and therefore take all necessary precautions), fate will be tempted to go ahead and make your worries come true.

So, if I was afraid I'll fail, I will.

Yeah, I've heard that a lot, and even seen it on t-shirts.

But isn't that because I was being a defeatist?

Maybe it's because I thought I'll lose, so I didn't give it a real fight, so I lost... a perfect self-fulfilling prophecy  (I made the term up then found out it exists, check it out)

Well the character in the TV show did call off the wedding after all, is that why?

She ruined something by believing it'll be ruined, and that thing directly depended on her attitude. So the logic holds, she could've been directly responsible for its ruin.

Today I was having a discussion with a friend, and I had to ask myself, can one do the opposite?

Can I make something work, because my attitude towards it is that it'll work?

Logically, no I can't!

Because for something to work, it needs all its dependencies fullfilled.

It's an AND function.

She needed many things (AND her atittude) to have the wedding go well, not to mention the whole marriage.

So it's not that simple.

You can wreck something by your attitude, but your attitude alone can't be sufficient to fix something.

You won't run if you don't think you can, but you won't fly only because you think you can.

On Leaving

Disclaimer: This will not be subtle, I'll leave subtlety for another post!

I couldn't help noticing how leaving the country is rapidly becoming a goal for almost every young egyptian.

Almost 70% of the people I know who are still in Egypt, have sent their CVs to friends abroad for consideration.

Everybody has either thought of leaving, or tried to leave, or in fact did leave.

That obviously means, that this subject became the bread and butter of social gatherings.

Yesterday, one of the people I respect, said to me that in all cases, the things we miss in Egypt aren't there anymore.

The example he drove was one I had already heard before...

"If you pass by the Church, for example, you'll find nobody hanging out there"

(I apologize for the example, but due to a miscalculated administrative desicion, that resulted in the launch of a nation-wide marketing campaign, Churches in Egypt were turned into Social Clubs as well as Houses of Worship!)

Now I had heard that exact same statement three times before, but this time there was a very important difference.

This time, the man who said it (as well as I) was sitting in a mall in Abu Dhabi, instead of on a car parked in front of that Church!

And then something hit me... a scene from an animated motion picture, WALL-E!

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

That scene in "WALL-E" where the Captain of the Axiom looks at the plant in the shoe, and tells it that it's okay, all it needed was a little care... then glances back at the computer screen showing what planet Earth had become... And makes up his mind to head back home immediately.

SPOILERS END

Of course there's nobody hanging out around our Church these days, they all left!

What do you expect? We've all abandoned ship!

Of course it's a mess! And of course it won't get any better over the years!

This is not a call to Egyptians to come back and clean up the dump that used to be their home, or die trying.

This is just a demonstration of the cause-and-effect relations that helped get us where we are.

What you take out of it is really very much up to you, don't blame it on me.