If you have a longing desire for disasters, they happen
The most accurate “thermometer” for public opinion and national sentiments are the taxi drivers. People of this profession, will never say, “How good that this street is asphalted,” they will say, “Well, again these streets have turned into ruins.” The taxi driver will not be happy with, let’s say, Levon Aronyan’s winnings, he will comment as follows, “Well, of course, Serge gives him abundant of money.” And so on. Naturally, this is not only the approach of drivers; the majority of “passengers” in our country also think so.
And, recently, one of the drivers began introducing the common, more precisely, the “intranational” apocalyptic image with the following information, “Well, did you hear that a new species of scorpions are found in Armenia? Last day, I heard on TV that the sting of these scorpions causes death, and these are found only in Armenia.” I strongly doubt, of course, that these new scorpions “were bread” only in our country. Either the “TV” explained wrongly, or (which is more likely) the driver has understood wrongly.
But, look, to what level of generalizations my interlocutor reaches from this “fact”. “Whatever pain is there, it gets to all Armenians, the scorpion will sting us, the snake will bite us too, there will be an earthquake, war, and in the end, we will gift this country to someone and we all will leave and go away.” In other words, the assumption that the scorpions can deadly sting only us, Armenians, he made a smooth transition to the expectation for general disaster.
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Psychologists have proved: if you are too focused on such expectations, then the likelihood is great that they would become a reality in one way of the other. Something analogously happened to king Edip, who made great efforts to avoid “perspicacity” of an oracle and for this very reason he fell into their trap.
The American psychologist Paul Watzlawick illustrated a more everyday example. An elderly woman is complaining that the children are swimming naked in the river next to her house by hurting her feelings. The police forces the children to swim a kilometer away from the residence. However, the woman complains again, saying that when she climbs to the roof of her house and watches with binoculars, she again can see the naked children. If the police had made the children go another three kilometers, then the woman is likely to walk these three kilometers and her feelings would be “hurt” again. If you “put” in your mind that I are a victim of circumstances, then finding these “circumstances” is a matter of techniques.
…Every day when I go to work, I have to go up the elevator to the 15th floor. Sometimes, it happens that the two elevators, at the moment when I push on the buttons, are closing the doors and then starting to go to the 15th floor, leaving me on the ground floor. In this case, there are two types of thinking. One is the “Armenian”, “Wow, my unhappy, well, I do not have luck at all, I knew it, I predicted it. It never happened that I come close to the elevators and they do not run away from me. See, how Poghos and Kirakos are going up safe and sound.” This is the end, the bad mood and “self-compassion” of the day is provided, another proof is found confirming the theory of my being an “unfortunate man”.
There is also the opposite, rational approach. “This time, I did not go into the elevator, but sometimes it happens that I have to wait two minutes, sometimes it happens that they are opening up in front of me on approaching. And this time, I have the choice, either to wait until one of the elevators will comes, or to go up on foot, which is much healthier.” I think, there is a scorpion in Armenia, true. But it is our “inner scorpion” eating us.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
