A sucker for ‘psychics’

How much of your life would you leave to fate and how much of it would you leave to fortune-tellers or self-proclaimed ‘psychics’?

I didn’t realize how my close friends were drawn to these things until I told them about how my resident psychic M accurately predicted some things in my life and they would badger me: “So who is she? What’s her telephone number and errr, how much?”

My kids would kill me if they knew Mom would pay P600 to have her fortunes told when they could have two gallons of ice cream instead. But I do see Madame M every semester or once every three months when the mood strikes me. There’s no rational explanation except that seeing her is a form of therapy sometimes and a follow-up serves to validate her previous ‘predictions’ (see how this thing can be addicting, huh!) I am very happy with the way things are going on in my life (including my lovelife, which Mme. M also ‘predicted’) but there are some things I still ‘consult’ her on such as business deals and work-related queries. Of course I’d be a fool to believe everything she says but listening to her read my cards and divine the future/present just gives me something to look forward to.

Of course not everything she says is really earth-shaking. Like the one time she told me my househelp is dying to have a vacation.

During a lull from work, I tease my housemate: ” I know Amy that you’re itching to have a vacation.”
And she turned to face me: ‘ Yes I do. How did you know Ate?”

Last week, I told my sis about Madame M. “She told me you would really like to go abroad now. Is this true?”
Older sis meekly admits to this and immediately gets curious about Mme. M. My Ate was so convinced about how my seer probed into her mind that she even asked me for her cellphone number, apparently bent on scheduling an appointment with her soon.

Some people think that seeking the help of fortune-tellers or manghuhulas is evil. I don’t have an opinion; I am amoral about these things. However, I have to admit that another person’s capacity to pinpoint certain details of my past with clear-cut precision impresses me; moreso if she tells me what would happen in the future and a few months down the road, it really does!

But as proven with some of my friends, you can’t prevent fate from happening even if you’ve been duly-warned by your fortune-teller. Take for instance my friend D who was advised against being involved with a married man. In a short while, she would meet Mr. Married and falls deeply for him. Or my friend S who was counselled to “take precautions or you will get pregnant.” True enough, she would meet this “accident” just from a one-night encounter with her long-distance boyfriend.

Recently, I met another fortune-telling fanatic in the person of Gie. She has in fact a separate folder in her mobile phone containing the names of all the psychics she knows in Manila, including one being employed by the police in locating “missing” or abducted persons. But unlike others overly concerned about their own lives, Gie is into the occult because she would like to know what’s happening in the lives of people close to her. In simple terms, nakikiusyoso.

Fortune-telling should be about having fun; it shouldn’t at all encroach on your religion or make you complacent and too dependent (magastos magpahula every week kung adik-adik ka na). If I remember right, Princess Diana went to see her psychic a few days before her Paris car crash; obviously, both of them didn’t have an inkling as to what would happen. Logic tells us that if these people gifted with the ‘third eye’ can see through everything, then this world would be such a peaceful, beautiful place. UnFORTUNEately, it doesn’t happen that way. These psychics are humans too.