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I saw Sir Ompong’s post yesterday about Feng Shui  Being the Oldest Hoax in the History and thought about why I half believe these things knowing that these beliefs could just really be hoax.

I was raised by a half-Chinese mother who got all her beliefs from her Chinese father – my grandfather that I only saw on a faded sepia photo. (Don’t look at my gravatar photo now. You won’t see any Chinese trace).

Though we weren’t that much into Feng Shui,  we firmly believe in Chinese Zodiac.

You were born in the year of the Wooden Ox so you are bound to work hard all your life. 

You are not lucky during the years of the Horse and the Dragon. It was the year of the horse when you got your big scar on your thigh. Now you cannot be a model anymore. What a waste of your long legs.  – And I’m like, Ma, seriously?

Ok. I  firmly believed in these things too, earlier, that I always looked for my readings/horoscope however you may call them whenever the new year approaches. Sometimes the readings come true, sometimes not.

A decade ago, I’ve read Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule. Not that I found it interesting, but I forced myself to read it because I cannot relate to what my friends were talking about during our late night group text chats. Not that I don’t like the author nor the book, I’m just not into this genre.

So after reading an almost never ending book, I finally came to a conclusion that I will not read something like this again. A book, that when I finally reach the last page, I can’t remember what happened on the first chapter. LOL.

Honestly, I can’t remember what happened in the book. I can’t even remember any of the characters. But I remember one line clearly. People are stupid.

“People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard’s First Rule

I believed in Chinese Zodiacs and the likes when I was younger not because I thought there was some truth to it but because that’s what I was taught to believe in and that’s the only truth that I thought there was. But as I grew older (and maybe wiser LOL) I realized that things happen, because they happen. Not because it’s your lucky or unlucky year. Not because you are born on this or that sign, not because you did not put a frog with a gold plated coin on your door or a porcelain cat that continuously waves its right hand.

I guess, human beings always try to rely on to something. Something that they want to believe in. Something that they can desperately hold on to, something they could applaud for bringing them luck in life or something they could blame when they lose in life’s battles, regardless of how true or untrue these beliefs are.

Sometimes they believe because they thought they knew what they believe in, sometimes because they don’t know what exactly to believe in.

I guess, that’s just how (some) human beings are.