Careful What You Wish For?

As I was thinking about Marisa Ryan's story, I could help but think, why her? Why do some people have these things happen and some don't? Lots of us wish something cool would happen to us, and many who do have psychic talents wish they would just go away. Perhaps it's like any talent, if you grow up with it, it doesn't seem special, and you need to work, just like anyone else, to make living at it. Haven't we all heard the stories of, now great, writers, artists, philosophers even mathematicians, who were told from a early age to "get a real job," or "you'll never make any money doing that," had to struggle to be recognized for who they were.

Of course, begin psychic isn't just unpopular, it carries it's own special stigma. Every famous psychic today seems to have a story about how they had to hide who they were growing up, lest people call them crazy or worse, instrument of the devil. (Isn't it odd that when people are different, it's always something from the devil or "God's punishment." Why not God's gift?)

Seeing the world differently seems to be part and parcel of what it means to be unusually talented. No matter what are the talent is, it depends upon being able to look at the same world everybody else sees and finding something different. Being able to see relationships nobody else does, between colors, sounds, shapes, numbers or concepts, that allow you to assemble them in surprising new ways. Begin a genius carries it's own weight, but with most talents there is a body of knowledge to draw upon. You can learn from people who went before you. There are teachers, books, videos and lessons to help you get started and understand what is happening. But if you have a psychic talent, you have to deal with it on your own and I can't help but think that could be much more challenging, and potentially frighting, than any of the others.

"Be careful what you wish for." I know two psychics that have used that phrase, and there are probably many more. Both had wished for some kind of sign and both got life-changing events that turned their worlds upside down. It's so easy to watch the hero struggle to overcome impossible odds, when you know how it's going to turn out. It's a very different story when you're the one faced with the impossible choices and you don't know how it's going to turn out.

I am as guilty as anyone else for wishing something would happen, that I would have some "special power." Always forgetting that, no matter what you have, it's an all-the-time, every hour, day in day out, kind of thing that becomes, just, ordinary. No genus is a genus to herself, she's just who she is. I have been called a genus from time to time, my SAT scores and other tests were really high, but I don't feel like a genus. What does a genus feel like anyway? About all I can say is that some subjects, like math and computer programming, seem really easy, and I've always been a bit puzzled about why everyone makes them out as being hard. I imagine being psychic is like that, you see things most people don't, but it's always that way. Why doesn't everybody have to make such a fuss about it? They are just there, like that chair or that desk, and the real problem is, why doesn't anyone else see them?

There's a song about racial inequality which I don't know the name of, but I still hear it on the radio from time to time. The chorus starts with "That's just the way it is," and there's a line that goes "Did you really think about it before you made the rules?" Who decided that psychic powers don't exit? Who wrote the unwritten law that all psychics are either fakers or crazy? I don't to belittle the plight of the disfranchised groups, but, no matter how bad things for them are, nobody denies the fact that they exist. The poor exist. Blacks exist. Trafficked children exit. But real psychics do not, at least according to our polite society, judicial and legal systems, or our scientific establishment. And that's a pity. How much richer a society would we have if our social norms, government and legal systems acknowledged that simply amassing wealth, for any individual or entity, is not an acceptable goal. Is it any surprise that we have a system where wealthiest entities in the world are truly amoral and soulless: corporations?