When I was born, my dad placed a horseshoe above my bedroom door for good luck. His Italian family had always kept this tradition, stemming from the age-old belief that iron horseshoes repel evil spirits, witches, and negative energy. His mom (my grandma) made sure that as soon as I could talk, I knew the Italian prayer to ward off the evil eye.
Unfortunately, I’ve always considered myself a pretty unlucky person. I’m saying this as someone who has had mono twice (the odds of which are nearly 0%), accidentally overdosed on vitamin D supplements, been told I had the worst UTI the doctors at UVM Medical Center have ever seen, and fallen off a lofted college dorm bed, injuring a nerve in my wrist so badly that I had to shut down my campus press-on nail business (RIP Catamount Claws).
We’re wrapping up halloweekend and in the middle of however many retrogrades. Even though people who know me know I tend to be unlucky, I’ve found that the unluckiness is adding up even more than usual. And that got me thinking… Have I been hexed?
This wasn’t a conclusion I came to lightly. I’ve had an exceptionally bad semester, packed with reeling from a breakup, quitting my first job, almost having to redo my entire honors thesis proposal, my heat being broken in the beginnings of Vermont winter, and being sick 90% of the time. With Etsy witches getting more requests than ever before, and having made enemies with some eerie people, a hex seems like a pretty realistic possibility.
Supposedly, to break the hex, I should take purifying baths (I rent… Yuck!), burn incense (probably setting off my fire alarm), stay calm (impossible), and do an egg cleanse (Eggs are way too expensive).
While I haven’t yet figured out how to break my hex, this got me thinking about Murphy’s Law, which states that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong”. The most well-known example of this is that if you drop a piece of buttered toast, it will always land butter side down on the floor. This saying has also been adapted to scare people. “The more you fear something, the more likely it will happen,” which obviously sounds like the perfect advice for anyone with anxiety. But what about the lesser known Yhpruym’s Law, which states that “anything that can go right will go right”.
I guess the point is that things can go both ways. Anything that can happen will happen. If Murphy’s Law can explain why everything seems to go wrong at the worst possible time, then surely Yhpruym’s Law deserves a chance too. If the bad things in life are inevitable, why shouldn’t the good things be? If you’re anything like me and jump to conclusions where you’re fully convinced you might be hexed or that someone is out to get you, I’m offering this piece of hope. Because after spending the last few months expecting the worst, maybe it’s time we give the universe a chance to surprise us.