My mom was extremely superstitious. I remember her knocking on wood, throwing salt over her shoulder, or telling me to bite my tongue. By contrast, I don’t think I’m terribly superstitious, except that I never talk about how good my car has been running, and I never say out loud how long it’s been since I caught a cold. I mean, why tempt fate?
Superstitions have been around pretty much since time began and their origin, according to historians, can be attributed to the ancient Babylonians. Today’s psychologists seem to think that wanting more control or certainty is the driving force behind most superstitions because it’s human nature to look for a rule or an explanation for why things happen, or why they don’t.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop is not technically a superstition. The concept is believed to have started in the tenements of New York City in the late 19th century, where high-rise apartments were built with the identical layout on each floor. It was common to hear your upstairs neighbor take off a shoe, drop it, and then repeat the action. So, the expression became a euphemism for waiting for something you knew was coming.
But what if that upstairs neighbor was an amputee? What if there is no other shoe?
Often, the concept of waiting for the other shoe to drop is considered to be negative. Say you just survived the first wave of layoffs at work, but you and some of your co-workers are expecting the next layoffs to occur within your department. You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. And once that other shoe drops, we might feel a sense of relief. Okay, you got your pink slip. Now you can start working on a strategy for what happens next.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop might also serve as an alert. Maybe your next-door neighbor just received her enormously high electric bill but for some reason, yours hasn’t yet landed in your mailbox. At least now, when that other shoe drops by way of your mailbox, you’ll be less shocked. And what if you’ve been especially conscientious about your thermostat and there is no other shoe?
Sometimes superstitions are used to ward off the worst-case scenario, like holding onto a rabbit’s foot, or crossing your fingers. Other times, they’re a forewarning of something negative, like breaking a mirror, or Friday the 13th. Irrespective of good versus bad luck, psychologists agree that superstitions can succeed because our own beliefs may ultimately improve our own performance. Take professional athletes, for example. Tiger Woods famously wears a red shirt on tournament Sundays, and Serena Williams doesn’t change her winning socks until she loses. (And she doesn’t wash them either!)
Do you find that you’re sometimes motivated by superstitions? When you knock on wood, cross your fingers, or find a heads-up penny, do good things happen?
Or do you deliberately walk under a ladder or open an umbrella indoors to tempt your own fate?
