Mind Over Matter

There is a kind of common philosophical theory that the mind controls reality. If you want something enough you can get it. Everything is perception. Nothing happens unless you really want it to.

Last night I was reading about the horrible consequences of a category five hurricane hitting New Orleans square on. I was thinking about all those people who couldn't get out of the city. I was thinking how I have always wanted to go but haven't. I was thinking a lot of things and I was terribly sad and thinking at least when the tsunami struck it happened quickly and we didn't have to sit around knowing there was nothing we could do while we waited for horrors.

Cam couldn't sleep either. He kept saying there was nothing we could do and I said we would spend some time today working out what we could afford to give to disaster relief. Of course that doesn't prevent anything bad from happening so it's not terribly reassuring.

Finally I told him to go to bed and pray for Katrina to veer away from NO. And that's what he did and he fell asleep. I was praying too. Lots of people in my neighborhood were praying. Lots of people in my state were praying. Even more people in our country were praying and even more than that around the world were praying.

This morning Katrina had moved enough off course to miss the city and had been downgraded to a category four. Instead of tens of thousands of lives lost it's just going to be a ridiculous amount of money lost.

Did the power of all those minds reach out and move the hurricane just enough? Did all that praying help? I don't know but it certainly didn't seem to hurt anything.