Senryu : superstition

bad luck comes in threes
superstition worries me
wonders, does good luck?

senryu by M. Nakazato LaFreniere

Superstitions are interesting.  Clothes have their own: from wearing polka dots attracts wealth to accidentally putting your clothes on will bring good luck.

Of course, you do have to deal with people thinking you’re an idiot for putting your clothes on inside out and you might lose that job during the interview because your potential new boss thinks you don’t pay attention to details, but you can’t put it back on right side out because then your good luck is gone.  You might win the lottery!

You could tell people you are doing it for Fashion Revolution day and that you’re only three years late to celebrate.  In April 2015, folks were urged to celebrate the day by wearing clothes inside out and show the label to ask the question “who makes my clothes?” It was triggered two years after the Rana Plaza tragedy because working conditions for many people who work in clothes making factories around the world are truly awful and haven’t changed: unsafe conditions, low wages, very little medical coverage and if they can’t go to work for awhile because they got hurt at work, they just get fired.

You could use the inside out superstition to raise the question, “is there anything I can do to change things?” A lot of bad luck, accidents waiting to happen are due to unsafe conditions or unpreparedness.  Maybe you’re not ready to take on something on the other side of the world.  But can you make something better here, now? in your country?  in your state? in your hometown?  in your home?

Maybe you can start by learning more about one particular problem that you would like to see changed.  One friend of mine is concerned about styrofoam ending up in the ocean and we live in the desert.  So she is taking mason jars in her purse with her so that if she has leftovers at a restaurant, she puts it in the mason jar; not their styrofoam or box container.  She can wash her mason jar and reuse it.  The styrofoam does not go into the landfill.

Some landfills get so full, they have to be moved somewhere else.  A waste company was shipping it to China which was causing both environmental problems there and international protests so China has refused to accept any more waste. There is a domino effect as one person changes, her change effects others.

My friend read about one person using mason jars. She still likes to eat out but one change has cuts down on her garbage.  Cutting one person’s garbage lessens the total in her city’s landfill.  Talking about it, others noticing her doing that, others start to copy her, rippling out. Recycle is good especially if materials can be repurposed but reuse trumps recycle.

This ripple cuts down on future problems — what happens when the landfill becomes too big, where do they ship it to? if things like styrofoam don’t break down, in the future will your grandchildren have to deal with the problem?  if they bury it deep will it have a weird unexpected effect that creates a huge tragedy in the future? Does the landfill becoming unstable little hills mean that they may slide, causing someone to get hurt.  Or their pieces of junk becoming  randomly unearthed and picked up by hurricanes or even whirling dervishes and dumped somewhere else? Oh, it’s an accident?  Oh it’s just bad luck that it happened?  It’s one action.  A simple action.  A mason jar in a purse. But it has a domino effect.

Bad luck or good luck are random events that happen unexpectedly.  But you can stack the deck to make one or the other more likely to happen.  Often it starts with little actions that have a ripple effect, sometimes unintended.  Little actions stack up when millions of people are doing them.

Have you written about an action you made to try to change something now or for the future?  Share the link in the comments

From Amazon:


The Three R’s: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle (What Do You Know About? Books).  Ages 4-8.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: An Easy Household Guide

Compost (Beginner Gardening Book 3), kindle only

Amazon disclosure: “We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.”
References:

Rana Plaza: Two years after the tragedy, why has so little changed?
The Guardian, April 22, 2015

Wear your clothes inside out for Fashion Revolution Day
The Guardian, April 24, 2015

RDP #43 – SUPERSTITION
Ragtag Daily Prompt
Fridays from Curious Steph
on Ragtag Community

The Ragtag Daily Prompt now has it’s own blog site called the “Ragtag Community“.  Each day of the week a prompt is presented by a different person.  Today’s is “superstition” by Curious Steph. Come and participate by posting writing or images evoked by the word and add your pingback or link to the comments there.  Hope to see you at Ragtag Community!