The “Bad” numbers

I don’t consider myself a fan of superstition. However, growing and living in this part of the world that full of tales of superstitions, I rather be cautious than sorry. One thing that obsess me so much is to avoid the number that consider unlucky or bad luck. for Chinese, every number with 4 is consider bad since the pronunciation for 4 in Chinese (including most of the dialect) is close to the word “Dead”. Therefore, during celebration, number 4 is something that most of the people try to avoid.

On the other side, number 13 is consider unlucky in western culture. I don’t know the reason behind. My conscious mind tell me that these are baseless superstition belief  and therefore I should not pay any attention to but in the recently years, I started to notice that I’m in one way or another influnced so greatly by these 2  ”forbidden” numbers.

First of all, during my gym session, I try to avoid stopping at repetition 13 or 14, 24, etc. no matter how strenuousness it is, I try to finish my repetition at 10 or 15. While driving, my car’s audio volume will never stopped at 13 or 14 . I will turn the volume to the closest number like 12 or 15 to avoid having those uncomfortable feeling of an accident is around the corner.

Are these numbers really bring bad luck to us? I don’t think so but the subconscious mind of mine keeps telling me to avoid it. To make myself feel better, it’s better to be careful rather than sorry.

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