Symbols evolve

There is a German superstition, a black cat crossing your path from right to left, which is considered to be a bad omen. The other day at an open house for our  son who is entering high school, a big black cat crossed my path in the ill-fated described direction. I grabbed my phone to google the symbol; yet, when I stared at it, it said 12:03 which in my book of symbols means, ‘ready, set, go’. ‘What is going on here?’, I thought to myself, ‘are good and bad omens now offsetting each other?’  I shrugged my shoulders, kind of curious what would be coming my way.

Sure enough, our youngest boy complained about tooth-ache that night and the dentist had already warned us that a root-canal would be necessary at one point. A printing error was found on my book, and my new web-site had technical issues as well. ‘Oh, well’, I thought to myself, ‘looks like the black cat wins the battle with numerology hands down.’ A few days later, however, everything was back to normal. The tooth-ache has vanished, the publisher promised to compensate me for the error, and I could even fix a couple of extra typos free of charge in the process. Last but not least, my  website was also up and running on the next day.


 The confusing messages of the crossing black cat at 12:03 was simply, lighten up my friend. It’s the best of times and the worst of times just as every other day. Symbols evolve; nothing is written in stone. Be flexible and pragmatic enough to adjust according to life’s many messages. For the record, I have nothing against black cats and welcome them into my life!