The pair of Mismatched Socks

    1. One of my friends told me about a cricket player, Ravi from his school, who wore one yellow sock and other red sock while batting. In case a pair needs to be replaced, he had many prepared with him. He was one of the best players of their team. My friend told me Ravi believed that it was his good luck charm to wear them during the match.


    1. I asked him about his take on this weird practice.


    1. He replied that it is not harmful to have such a habit. Wearing those socks gave him hope and motivation to win.

I argued that he was being superstitious!!
But he said, so what, What is so bad in it? Afterall, he is winning!!

My friend, Let me tell you what so harmful about superstitions.

Superstitions are the beliefs in some supernatural phenomenon. The phenomenon that has no explanation. It is not as weak as it sounds. Superstitions have a huge power. They can completely take over your thought process, play with it and make you dance over their tunes. And that is because of a single reason. They play with your fear. The fear is usually a fear of loss, may be losing a match, failing an exam or anything.

It doesn’t bother us that much because for us it is a matter of the moment we are practicing it, like saying mere two words “TOUCH WOOD” doesn’t seem to harm in any way or waiting for sometime after we sneeze is not that difficult. But we don’t realise, that how deeply we are being affected.

Being superstitious has many harms. Its harmful not only because it affects us psychologically, but also because it is a much difficult task to hide our superstitious side from others. This makes our personality vulnerable to negative approach and judgement in other’s mind. For instance imagine a scenario of a job placement interview, where a mere negative judgement about your personality can seize a life time opportunity from you.

Saying “Touch Wood” shows how insecure one is. A smart person would believe in his hard work towards the task, instead of protecting it from some unknown power, which doesn’t even exists.

Even after all this, You may say that he practices superstitions to be safe, what does it costs!!

And the answer is, it does cost you your self confidence, ability to make wise decisions and ya it completely makes you unsafe. A superstitious person always suffers from a fear: a fear of some unknown thing. Such a person instead of having a confidence on himself and his ability, is always suspicious that something bad is going to happen and someone is planning bad for him, no matter how good he is or how much good works he has done. So, his decisions include some weird things.

Which reminds me of Ravi. Back in school, You just saw a cricket player playing good. But you never realised what his thought process was growing into. He believed in something which is unarguably disgusting to believe.

If something should give him hope to win, it shouldn’t be a pair of mismatched socks, rather his cricketing skills and his hard work during the practice.
His game should not depend upon a pair of socks rather his talent.
And if he wins, the credit must not go to a pair of socks, But him.

Because its always the hard work that leads us to success, not a..

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