By Richard Lee - 18/06/2008

Superstitions

Friday 13th June 08; heavy tropical thunderstorms in Orlando and I’m sat by the window of the Boeing plane from which we are about to take off.

The airport drenched and the pilot comes on the speaker to announce it’s a 50/50 chance as to whether we’d be taking off or not as we weren’t sure as to whether we could beat the next storm to take off. The situation I, and all the other passengers aboard our flight faced got me thinking about superstitions, where they originated and what affect they have had and can have.

Firstly I wanted to know why Friday the 13th was thought to be unlucky, where could this have derived from and my research pointed towards Christianity. The events of Good Friday, the day Jesus Christ was crucified, according to Christian lore, Adam and Eve also supposedly ate the forbidden fruit on a Friday, the Great Flood started on a Friday, the builders of the Tower of Babel were tongue-tied on a Friday and the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on a Friday.  Co-incidence?  Or a real reason to be superstitious of this day?

There is also the belief that the mind will find reasons to back up a belief, so for instance if someone held the belief that Friday the 13th was unlucky for them they could go out of their way to find reasons as to why that’s the case. Reasons that may well just be pure coincidences.

For me, a superstition of my past wasn’t so much of Friday the 13th but just the number 13. After having a break-through season of sorts and playing my first senior games wearing the number 30 shirt, I began the next season in the number 13 shirt.

I then proceeded to twist my ankle, missing an England Under-21 call-up, getting concussed just a week prior to the beginning of the season and then a few weeks later splitting my arm in two and missing the majority of the season. Whose fault could this be?? Well the number of course!

I look back now and deem this a bit ridiculous (although I won’t go out of my way to change back!). I wore number 16 the following season and finished the season breaking my cheekbone, rupturing my bicep and needed an operation on my knee but never even questioned the number - why would I, 16 isn’t thought to be unlucky!

Consciously I think we all know that superstitions don’t make much sense but if the thought of them is having a positive effect in a performance or on your life then they are not necessarily wrong. My personal thought is that superstitions can be limiting, more mentally than anything.

What if a life-long superstition couldn’t be fulfilled, would everything you have built just collapse around you? Most of us with superstitions have, at some point, been forced to break them and, more times than not, the outcome has been fine and quite often whatever happened in the next place is that the new routine would take over and become the new superstition!

The fact that I’m writing this means that obviously the flight was fine (despite some turbulence!) and we took off without delay and for some reason this flight wasn’t particularly full, which meant I had two seats to myself! Wonder why that could be?