The Magic Of Thinking Big Ebook

[Orestes Hardy]

Thereis currently no scientific explanation as to why some individuals tend to have these particular symptoms, compared to any others. Many of those with OCD are constantly bombarded with very strange and doubtful thoughts about harm coming to themselves and/or others. Sufferers thus may feel that they cannot resort to ordinary protective measures, because of these extraordinary threats. Their world seems out of the range of normal control. They therefore turn to magic as the only other viable alternative, as a way of restoring a feeling of control.

One other possible influence upon the development of magical thinking may be if an individual with OCD comes from a culture in which superstition plays a strong role. Coming from such a background cannot, of course, cause OCD; however, it can certainly help give someone at risk a push in the wrong direction if everyone at home is doing magical rituals.

In this way, confidence is progressively increased, and symptoms are systematically eliminated. The person becomes habituated to the fearful thoughts to the point of no longer having to react to them, even if they do not completely cease. In uncomplicated cases, the process described above should take anywhere from six to twelve months. With individuals who habituate after only one exposure to each feared situation, the process may even be quicker.

But, regardless, what I really want is for people to stop forcing that false, magical thinking on people with real mental illnesses. We need better. We need science. We need medicine. We need doctors. We need things that will actually help us and not crappy Oprah-isms that help no one except the author of a 15-year-old book.

Katharine was the middle girl, of docile dispositionand a comfort to her mother. She knew she was acomfort, and docile, because she'd heard her mother say so.And the others knew she was, too, by now, becauseever since that day Katharine would keep boastingabout what a comfort she was, and how docile, untilJane declared she would utter a piercing shriek andfall over dead if she heard another word about it. Thiswill give you some idea of what Jane and Katharinewere like.

The children never went to the country or a lake inthe summer, the way their friends did, because theirfather was dead and their mother worked very hardon the other newspaper, the one almost nobody on theblock took. A woman named Miss Bick came in everyday to care for the children, but she couldn't seem tocare for them very much, nor they for her. And shewouldn't take them to the country or a lake; she saidit was too much to expect and the sound of wavesaffected her heart.

"It would attract lightning," Miss Bick said, whichJane thought cowardly, besides being unfair arguing.If you're going to argue, and Jane usually was, youwant people to line up all their objections at a time;then you can knock them all down at once. But MissBick was always sly.

Still, even without the country or a lake, the summerwas a fine thing, particularly when you were at thebeginning of it, looking ahead into it. There would bemonths of beautifully long, empty days, and each otherto play with, and the books from the library.

In the summer you could take out ten books at atime, instead of three, and keep them a month, insteadof two weeks. Of course you could take only four ofthe fiction books, which were the best, but Jane likedplays and they were non-fiction, and Katharine likedpoetry and that was non-fiction, and Martha was stillthe age for picture-books, and they didn't count asfiction but were often nearly as good.

After that Jane and Mark made a rule that nobodycould read bits out loud and bother the others. But thissummer the rule was changed. This summer thechildren had found some books by a writer named E. Nesbit,surely the most wonderful books in the world.They read every one that the library had, right away,except a book called The Enchanted Castle, which hadbeen out.

And now yesterday The Enchanted Castle had comein, and they took it out, and Jane, because she couldread fastest and loudest, read it out loud all the wayhome, and when they got home she went on reading,and when their mother came home they hardly saida word to her, and when dinner was served they didn'tnotice a thing they ate. Bedtime came at the momentwhen the magic ring in the book changed from a ringof invisibility to a wishing ring. It was a terrible placeto stop, but their mother had one of her strict moments;so stop they did.

Because of course the only way pretending is anygood is if you never say right out that that's whatyou're doing. Martha knew this perfectly well, but inher youth she sometimes forgot. So now Mark threw apillow at her, and so did Jane and Katharine, and inthe excitement that followed their mother woke up,and Miss Bick arrived and started giving orders, and "allwas flotsam and jetsam," in the poetic words of Katharine.

Two hours later, with breakfast eaten, Mother goneto work and the dishes done, the four childrenescaped at last, and came out into the sun. It was fineweather, warm and blue-skied and full of possibilities,and the day began well, with a glint of something metalin a crack in the sidewalk.

"Dibs on the nickel," Jane said, and scooped it intoher pocket with the rest of her allowance, still jinglingthere unspent. She would get round to thinking aboutspending it after the adventures of the morning.

The adventures of the morning began with promise.Mrs. Hudson's house looked quite like an EnchantedCastle, with its stone wall around and iron dog on thelawn. But when Mark crawled into the peony bed andJane stood on his shoulders and held Martha up to thekitchen window, all Martha saw was Mrs. Hudsonmixing something in a bowl.

And then when one of the black ants that live inall peony beds bit Mark, and he dropped Jane andMartha with a crash, nothing happened exceptMrs. Hudson's coming out and chasing them with a broomthe way she always did, and saying she'd tell theirmother. This didn't worry them much, because theirmother always said it was Mrs. Hudson's own fault,that people who had trouble with children brought iton themselves, but it was boring.

So then the children went farther down the streetand looked at the Miss Kings' garden. Bees werehumming pleasantly round the columbines, and there wereCanterbury bells and purple foxgloves looking satisfactorilyold-fashioned, and for a moment it seemed asthough anything might happen.

But then Miss Mamie King came out and told themthat a dear little fairy lived in the biggest purplefoxglove, and this wasn't the kind of talk the childrenwanted to hear at all. They stayed only long enoughto be polite, before trooping dispiritedly back to siton their own front steps.

The fire was eight blocks away, and it took them along time to get there, because Martha wasn't allowedto cross streets by herself, and couldn't run fast yet,like the others; so they had to keep waiting for herto catch up, at all the corners.

And when they finally reached the house where thetrucks had stopped, it wasn't the house that was onfire. It was a playhouse in the back yard, the fanciestplayhouse the children had ever seen, two stories highand with dormer windows.

You all know what watching a fire is like, the gloryof the flames streaming out through the windows, andthe wonderful moment when the roof falls in, or evenbetter if there's a tower and it falls through the roof.This playhouse did have a tower, and it fell through theroof most beautifully, with a crash and a shower ofsparks.

And the fact that it was a playhouse, and small likethe children, made it seem even more like a special firethat was planned just for them. And the little girl theplayhouse belonged to turned out to be an unmistakablyspoiled and unpleasant type named Genevieve,with long golden curls that had probably never beencut; so that was all right. And furthermore, thechildren overheard her father say he'd buy her a newplayhouse with the insurance money.

So altogether there was no reason for any but feelingsof the deepest satisfaction in the breasts of the fourchildren, as they stood breathing heavily and watchingthe firemen deal with the flames, which they didwith that heroic calm typical of fire departments theworld over.

"All of a piece it went up, like the Fourth of Julyas ever was," said the nurse. "And it's my opinion," sheadded, looking at Jane very suspiciously, "that it wasset! What are you doing here, little girl?"

"The thing is," Mark went on, "was it just anaccident, or did we want so much to be magic we got thatway, somehow? The thing is, each of us ought to makea wish. That'll prove it one way or the other."

But Martha balked at this. You could never tell withMartha. Sometimes she would act just as grown-up asthe others, and then suddenly she would be a baby.Now she was a baby. Her lip trembled, and she saidshe didn't want to make a wish and she wouldn't makea wish and she wished they'd never started to play thisgame in the first place.

After consultation, Mark and Katharine decided thiscould count as Martha's wish, but it didn't seem to havecome true, because if it had they wouldn't rememberany of the morning, and yet they remembered it alltoo clearly. But just as a test Mark turned to Jane.

Katharine wished Shakespeare would come up andtalk to her. She forgot to say exactly when she wantedthis to happen, but after they waited a minute and hedidn't appear, they decided he probably wasn't coming.

But try as they might, they couldn't persuade Janeto make another wish, even a little safe one. She justkept shaking her head at all their arguments, and whenargument descended to insult she didn't say a word,which was most unlike Jane.

When they got home she said she had a headache,and went out on the sleeping porch, and shut the door.She wouldn't even come downstairs for lunch, butstayed out there alone all the afternoon, moodilyeating a whole box of Social Tea biscuits and talking toCarrie, the cat. Miss Bick despaired of her.

3a8082e126