That’s not Faith, that’s Desperation

In America, you cite Dostoevsky. In Russia, Dostoevsky cites you:

I am also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicine. (I’m sufficiently educated not to be superstitious, but I am.)

Once again, Fyodor speaks for me. Usually he’s just saying “Here we have another pretentious liberal arts major who can’t find a job,” but in this passage he’s hitting a different nail on the head.* You see, I’m an analytical guy. Give me a spreadsheet and a couple hundred different convertible bonds to compare and I’m as happy a pig in a candy store. Baseball? I don’t care who wins or loses, so long as they generate enough statistical minutia for online showdowns. “How can you pick Perez and his career WHIP of 1.425 over Lowe and his ERA+ of 122?” Don’t get me started on Brian Bannister and the BABIPs.

But growing up Catholic, I can’t help but see purpose in every coincidence, imagining a cause for every effect in a manner that would do a paranoid schizophrenic proud. I missed the traffic light? Must be those impure thoughts from yesterday. Einstein Brothers is out of powerbagels? It’s because I said something blasphemous on Facebook. I have cancer? We know whose fault that is.

I admit it, won’t keep it a Secret. The idea that we’re responsible for everything about our lives, from our health and our love life all the way down to that guy taking our parking spot yesterday at the mall, appeals to my sense of justice and order. Even now I think that book has a lot to say about keeping the right frame of mind and maintaining a positive outlook. Or as they would have it, a positive “vibration.” Never knew that behind this billion-selling worldwide phenomenon lay Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, did you?

The reason I say “Even now” is because I broke with Oprah and Rhonda after following this line of thinking to the terminus. That station has a sign reading “You two million kids with AIDS over in Sub-Saharan Africa? Yeah, that’s on you.” Hey, no wonder it appeals to my Catholic side! Condoms don’t stop the spread of HIV — only an upbeat attitude can! The Nigerians and Kenyan babies should be thinking “Daddy will live,” but they keep expressing it as a negative: “I hope Daddy doesn’t die.” What do they expect from the Universe?

Here’s what I expect: That every seemingly mystical effect can eventually be seen to have a logical explanation. That if my tumors are way too numerous and huge for a 160-pound 38-year-old, it’s because of something in my DNA and my environment, not because of the raging self-hatred I carried in my heart for so long. That if a miracle cure is in the cards for me, it won’t be due to vibrations, but to the kooky organic foods I’ve been eating on the advice of David Servan-Schreiber. That guy was 31 when he started eating the seaweed and flaxseed oil, telling his brain tumor to eat a dick. He’s outlived his prognosis by more than a decade now.

And he’s an M.D. — science and reason ftw!

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* In the same paragraph he famously notes “I am a sick man… I am an angry man. An unattractive man. I think there is something wrong with my liver.” Yep, he’s got me pegged all right.

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