Why I Believe in Fairies

Anyone who knows me well can tell you that I do many silly things.  Some of these things – such as habitually misplacing my keys and routinely starting kitchen fires – I do inadvertently.  There are, though, a number of other silly things I do intentionally. Such as knocking on wood every time I say something I feel has “tempted fate,” or saying, “Someone has walked across my grave” whenever I feel an unexplained shiver.  The truth is that despite being reasonably educated, I remain a deeply superstitious person.  I realize that this probably comes across as coldly elitist; by saying that I am superstitious in spite of my education, I am implying that a majority of people who practice superstitious behaviors do so because they are uneducated and don’t know any better.  This may or may not be true.  I don’t know.  I do know, however, that the word “superstition” is laden with all sorts of negative connotations.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines superstition as “[u]nreasoning awe or fear of something unknown, mysterious, or imaginary, esp. in connection with religion; religious belief or practice founded upon fear or ignorance.”  So there you have it.  By admitting to being superstitious, I’ve acknowledged that I am driven by ignorance and fear to cling to imaginary and irrational explanations for those things that lie outside of my understanding.

 

But at least I’ve admitted it, right?   

 

Therein lies the problem.  By acknowledging that my superstitious beliefs are rooted in ignorance and unreason I am (a) embracing the sort of enlightenment thinking that seeks dismantle the very things in which I profess to believe, and (b) confessing that I don’t really believe in the things I believe.  In this manner, my knocking on wood so that the good thing I have just acknowledged will continue to occur is akin to attending church because I don’t want to go to hell just in case there happens to be a God.  In short, it’s an empty gesture.  Or an ironic gesture.  Take your pick.

 

The thing is, though, that I really want to believe.  Honestly.  Not just because I’m afraid.  And I am afraid.  I feel no shame in admitting this.  Seriously, what person can contemplate the “undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns” without feeling even the slightest twinge of fear?  Who hasn’t lain awake in the darkness grappling with the certainty that one day her body will shut down and that at that moment, her consciousness might disappear entirely?  I’ll tell you who: the true believer.  The one who sees reason in unreason, who can reconcile fact with belief.  And yes, I wish I were one of these people.  I wish I could find comfort in certainty, even if I do end up being wrong in the end.  But I can’t, and really, this isn’t why I try to believe in the things in which I can’t really believe. 

 

I want to believe because belief can be beautiful.  I want to believe because there are things that can’t be explained, things that defy reason.  At least I hope so.  Because while science and reason have the power to explain some things brilliantly, they strip the magic and wonder from other things.  Scientific explanations of the interactions among celestial bodies can be gorgeous.  Absolutely soul-stirring.  Attempts to explain interactions among human beings?  Not so much.  Love?  A biological mechanism aimed toward ensuring the continuation of the species through procreation.  Death?  A natural stage in the life cycle wherein the body returns to the earth as organic material.  In short, we become nothing more than the sum of our body’s physical components and functions.  Perhaps this is true, but I find it reductive and unspeakably depressing.  Frankly, if I am living merely to survive and reproduce, I don’t know if I want to live.  I guess I’m just romantic like that.

 

So anyway, I do kooky little superstitious things because, even though I’m not capable of any sort of capital “B” religious-type Beliefs, I believe – or want to believe – that there are elements of existence that can’t be observed or measured or explained.  Little sparks of magic glimmering in the air all around us.  The fairies stole my keys again.  A ghost left that paper towel on the stove.  Of course I know these things aren’t empirically true.  They are metaphors for the aspects of myself that I do not want to rationalize or domesticate.  And when I knock on wood, I’m really just saying, “thank you, whatever you are.”