Let me tell you a modern-day tale of Oedipus Rex. But first, I am going to briefly tell you the original tale in modern language.
It goes something like this:
Laius and Jocasta: Yay! We had a baby!
Oracle (someone who foretells the future): Yo, I just got a tip that your son is going to kill you Laius.
Laius and Jocasta: Naturally, our only option is to send our baby out of Thebes.
Many years later and in a different town:
Oracle: Oedipus, man, I don't know how to break this to you but, uh, you are going to kill your father and marry your mother.
Oedipus: SICK.
Oracle: I know, right?
Oedipus decides to leave his parents home to avoid doing either of those things. On the road he kills the King of Thebes, Laius, and then he marries the widowed queen, Jocasta. Later on he finds out that Laius and Jocasta are his actual parents. HE is the baby that they sent away.
Brief aside: When Oedipus realized that he had inadvertently caused the very thing that he didn't want to happen, to happen, he gouged his eyes out.
Ok. You are probably wondering why I told you this story. Well, because a similar sort of thing happened to me. Except what happened to me wasn't that terrible.
I like to pretend that I can control things. Not crazy things like inanimate objects with my mind or the outcome of the election. Just, ya know, my life and stuff.
I have convinced myself that if I worry about something enough, I'll be able avoid any misfortunes that might come my way.
Case in point: I had a semi-expensive bottle of essential oils in the front pocket of my backpack.
A mere twenty feet from the door to my house, I was walking composedly up the sidewalk. Then barreling in like a freight train from some town where they worry a lot, a thought entered my mind. The thought was this: "WHAT IF, my backpack is unzipped at this very moment and my semi-expensive bottle of essential oils that I just bought, falls out of my backpack and I lose it or it breaks??" I quickly whipped my pack around, unzipped the pocket to make sure that my bottle was still in there and because of that, I dropped the bottle onto the ground. Where it semi-broke.
Like tragic Oedipus of old, I had killed my father in the form of slightly scientifically-supported headache reliever and in the process, given myself a headache. I did not gouge my eyes out.
Picture with me another modern-day scenario:
You don't want to lose something. That something is probably an important object like keys, or glasses or that random tool that you only use once every 4 years but has one very important specific function.
You notice this thing in its current habitat. You think, "hmm I'm probably going to lose it if I leave it there. I am going to move it to another spot that is much more logical so that I won't forget where it is."
What happens next? When you go to look for the thing, it is humanly impossible for you to remember where you moved it. What can you remember though, without fail? Where it was originally.
My friend, if this happens to you, consider yourself among one of the great and noble ones that the Greeks deemed worthy to etch onto a pot, because you have just Oedipus Rexed yourself.
