Affirmations

Affirmations work. Trust the process. Try it. It can't hurt. Look at the people who have incorporated affirmations into their routine and ask yourself whether they are losers. They tend to be happy and successful. It's a tool like exercise and education.

What are affirmations?
Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, responds to criticism

Affirmations work because perception is not reality. We think we see a person, an animal, a building, but we will never know what it is and whether it is actually there. When we "die" perhaps we get to see the meaning of things; perhaps it's the end of our universe; perhaps we go on the merry go round again; perhaps everything goes dark for good. No matter what scientists tell us, there is nothing about our profound "being" that is really understood. Life is mysterious, death even more so.

Quantum physics tells us that there are an infinite number of duplicates for everything — blades of grass, kittens, cannibals. Even ordinary people like you and me, living an infinite number of lives, all at once in parallel universes. Quantum physics says that everything is possible, all outcomes equally likely. It's only the observer who chooses which outcome to see. Is light a wave or a particle? The answer depends on your preference and prejudice.

"Reality" is a menu of confounding choices. Somehow we have the ability to choose at every moment which universe to step or fall into. Or maybe it just seems like choosing. Affirmations help us "steer" or at least give us the illusion of control. After all, we have this instinct to do something.

That is not to say that our actions don't matter. They do matter and we are the ultimate judge of our own actions. Life is tragic and beautiful. We have all of these stupid decisions to make, most of which don't matter one bit. But there are a sneaky few that make all the difference, as Robert Frost warned us about.

Once you go forward in time, you can not go back. You can only act in the future, the past is forever locked in an amber bubble. Forgive those who have disappointed you and forgive yourself. Neither the legal system nor violence are effective in the end. We're just ghosts fighting the apparitions of our own creation. We lean on what we thought was a wall, and our hand passes right through it. The immigrant becomes a Rockefeller. The Nasdaq falls from 5,000 to 1,600 in a single year. And then it eventually crawls back, for those who have the luxury of waiting for their affirmations to pan out.

Sometimes I think affirmations don't work but they always end up proving me wrong. Can a 35 year old single woman with three kids working for minimum wage affirm herself into being Queen Elizabeth? Probably not. But then again I have never been either. Like all things, affirmations require patience.

Are affirmations the same as prayer? Probably so but with one important difference: I don't think there is an omniscient being out there who chooses to listen (or not) to someone based on whim or malice or love; or how many sacrifices you've made this week; or whether you're "reborn"; or whether you're a murderer or a vegetarian; or whether you affirm while sitting down or standing up, in a church or a cardboard box or while taking a crap. Affirmations work no matter who you are or what you've done and there's no right or wrong way to do them. You only have to believe they will work.

We are but infinitesimal strands of proteins that have the inextinguishable drive to recreate themselves in greater and greater numbers. If you believe that, I don't know why you wouldn't give affirmations a shot.

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