Organized Chaos - Volume 8
If only we were so powerful
by Jared Kant
With all the concerns that we come up with in our daily comings and goings, strictly speaking about OCD, it’s quite an amazing assortment of powers that we assign ourselves. The fear of spreading disease, being responsible for the next epidemic, setting off bombs merely with our minds, causing harm to other people by sheer telepathy or walking in a jagged line as opposed to a straight line, these are all potentially remarkable talents.
A fear of mine is often that by doing this or that other task, I might actually be responsible for the creation of a new illness and inflict massive suffering on the population. This would essentially make me the most powerful person in all of medicine. Consider that. The term for this sort of line of thought is “magical thinking”, which is the concept of assigning totally unreasonable power to ourselves or certain objects. The person who believes that using a certain pen will cause his or her mother to die is putting a lot of power in that pen. In actuality, the pen has no bearing on the health of others whatsoever.
There was one time where I was convinced briefly that if I didn’t do something, I would single-handedly throw gravity off kilter, which would make me the first human being in scientific record to successfully launch the entire planet’s population into orbit around the stratosphere. A part of me wonders why this was even a fear; after all, doesn’t everyone want to fly at some point? I think a great many of you would send me thank you notes if I managed to find a way to control gravity, especially if it involved something as innocuous and simple as tying my shoes.
Many OCD sufferers are afraid that ultimately, if they don’t check every light switch, every doorknob and every kitchen appliance, fire and anarchy will spread like a plague across the neighborhood. My initial response, objectively speaking, is that this is a phenomenal amount of responsibility. My second response is that this would make whoever was responsible for these tasks a very important person. My third thought was that this person actually, at least in his or her head, controlled the fate of the entire neighborhood. This is very analogous to many superheroes I can name off the top of my head. Pick up any “Batman” comic book, and you’ll see what I mean. There’s a man who, if he were actually alive, would have a lot of checking to do.
There are a great many people whose intrusive thoughts involve violence of extreme proportions. Without following the instructions set out by their rituals, often something as simple as washing their hands, these people fear that they might actually hurt people merely by accident. This would be an amazing way to exact justice on any criminal. Just sit on top of a rooftop, watch for a person to attempt to rob a convenience store, and once they enter the building, according to this obsession and compulsion, you would merely have to get your hands dirty to foil the crime.
What I’m getting at is certainly not meant to be cruel or making fun of the OCD community, but actually just a strange musing and something to consider. If you find yourself in a situation where you’re afraid that something you do could possibly have huge consequences, then consider whether there is another person on the planet who has such a power. Chances are, they don’t. All the same, it would be neat to be able to affect the gravitational pull of the earth and fight crime from the top of a building in a lawn chair.
