A Life of Thinking Magically

And Joan Didion only had to put up with it for a year.

That wonderful essayist, Joan Didion, once published a book entitled ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’, which charted the terrible year in which her husband, John Gregory Dunne, died and her daughter, Quintana was taken critically ( and eventually fatally) ill. Didion talks about how her reason and sanity was suspended during this period , so great was her grief, hence the year of magical thinking.

Poor Joan. Yet she is fortunate, perhaps, in only spending a year in the grip of magical thinking, whereas I, to this day, have spent a life time chasing ghosts in my own head. And I think this is not unusual.

We dismiss the gods as not being real, but they are still with us nonetheless. I cannot help but feel, when a series of unfortunate events falls upon me in a sequence that seems to me beyond the boundaries of chance - let’s say, I just miss my bus going to an important appointment by a few seconds, then, trying to take the train as a substitute find that the line is suspended, and them trying Uber, only to discover that my phone is out of power - then the gods reveal themselves as acting personally against me on this occasion, out of sheer malice, or perhaps deserved sin on my part. But my rational belief that this is pure chance is easily trumped by the sense that someone, somewhere, has it in for me.