Place of Refuge

Place of Refuge

05 June 2010

The Hopefulness of the Chain Letter

1.

I got this e-mail the other day from an old friend.

It went like this:


Dear XXXX,  
You are my 8 women, who if we were in a room together, 
could accomplish anything we set our minds to. 
So read the directions below and send this to 7 more women. 
I count as the eighth woman. 
 
I am supposed to pick 7 women who have touched my life and who 
I think might participate. 
I think that if this group of women were ever to be in a room together, 
there is nothing that would be impossible. 
I hope I chose the right six... Please send this back to me.

Remember to make a wish before you read the quotation.. 
That's all you have to do. 
There is nothing attached. 
Just send this to six women and let me know what happens on the fourth day. 
Sorry you have to forward the message, 
but try not to break this, please. Did you make a wish yet? 
If you don't make a wish, it won't come true. This is your last chance to make a wish!
 
 
My room of 8
May today there be peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.
Now, I really hate this kind of e-mail.
I hate this kind of e-mail for a couple reasons:

1.  I'm usually about the fourth in the chain, and by
the time it gets to me, the formatting of the actual
special little message is so messed up, I can't even read
the thing.  In the case of this message, it ran way off 
the page, and I had to scroll scroll scroll to read the
entire sentence.

2.  I often get them from people I haven't heard from in 
awhile, but they're people I care about.  So I want to let 
them know that I really value being one of the eight women
in her room of eight women, and the most efficient way to do that
is to send this message to eight women (one being her)
so she knows she's in my room of eight women, too.

3.  But then I leave six of my friends in the same quandary.

4. There's this question of something special, perhaps even magical
that will happen after four days.  Now, I happen to believe
in magic.
Or at least I'm hopeful.
So there's this tantalizing possibility
that in four days,
I'll discover something very 
mysterious and magical.
And part of me wants to believe
that that is possible.  When in 
actual fact, what I'll discover is
which of my friends is sucker enough
to send this on.

Probably one.
In fact, she did it already, because
I fell for it.
In a moment of weakness, I chose
that lucky seven.
(or should it be six?--
if I'm one and the friend
who sent me the message
is two, then it should be 
six.  Yes, it should be six.)

Whatever.

I did it.
And one of my friends
did it too
already.

3.
Well,
the morning after I sent this poorly formatted message
to seven lucky people, six of whom probably hit
"delete" without even bothering to read the thing,
I started thinking about it, 
and thinking about
why the heck I sent that
to my sister-in-law.
I actually really do like her.

And then, I started thinking,
as I am prone to do,
I started thinking about earlier versions of these
messages:
the chain letter.

(chainletterevolution an interesting article!)

I remember the first one I ever got,
when I was about eight years old.
I think it was from my cousin, S, and 
she sent this tightly folded sheet of 
notebook paper, scrawled in pencil, telling me to 
copy it and send it
to twelve other people.  The bulk of the letter
was a list of fifteen names, with my cousin's
at the bottom.  The letter told me to copy the letter, with all the names except the first one,
and make sure my name was
at the bottom of the list.
I was then supposed to take that name that I deleted from the top of the list
and send that person at the top of the list
one dollar.

The hope is that,
if I sent this letter to the right people,
they would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would send it to the right people,
who would
ultimately
all send me a dollar
and I'd be able to retire at the age of 
sixteen.

My mother
saw the letter, and said:
"don't you dare send that letter to twelve people,
and don't you dare send her a dollar.  I'm 
going to tell S's mother (my mother's sister)
that she's sending those awful things out."

Awful things.

"The only person who is going to make money off of that
will be your cousin, and she'll make a dollar,
off of you!"

That's what my mother said.
And I sure as hell wasn't going
to be a fool
and send my stinking cousin
a dollar.

So I threw the thing out,
with my mother watching,
before she marched to the phone
and called her sister.

From that point on,
I considered
chain letters to be
vile,
a thing of the devil,
designed to deceive
pathetic people
like me.

~

Moms seem to be central figures in Chain Letters, and they tend to be
the voices of reason:



I'm not sure when this happened,
but mom has been replaced:

the Federal Government has 
acknowledged that people who trust
are fools, and that people who start
chain letters are scam artists.
They made it illegal;
here's a message about that
from the 



4.
Clearly,
there is an evil side to chain letters,
if chain letters
threaten
death to your mother
death to you
death to your dog
traffic accidents
bad dreams
whatever. . . .



It appears that the internet has caused 
the proliferation
of this genre
and no one is ever
asked to send
a dollar
to anyone anymore,
you just have to send the thing on
or be scared shitless.
That particularly type of chain letter
tends to target young people
who are easily scared shitless.

Now, why isn't there a law about that?

5.
The thing about Chain Letters
and our distrust of them
is that in our society,
there is the belief
that there are, essentially,
two different kind of people:
the scammers
and
the scammed;
aka
the wise
and 
the stupid;
aka
the deceitful
and
the trusting;
aka
the evil
and 
the good

and the two twains shall never meet,
and people never change.

This is a fundamental premise in our society.
And people are, either by choice or by nature,
one or the other,
and
if you send a dollar to the first name on the chain letter,
you will surely 
never receive a dollar.
You're better off
not sending the dollar and therefore not receiving the dollar,
rather than sending the dollar and being made to look like
a fool.




6.
Still, I look back
at the message I sent
to seven of my most forgiving friends,
and I am struck by the hope in it
a hope not too different
from my youthful hope
as I contemplating sending a dollar to someone I didn't know.

That message promised me something
magical,
something special.

And I think:
what is the most magical thing that could happen?
I won't get a penny,
nor will any of my friends,
but perhaps,
if I could throw aside my distrust --
indeed, if distrust was not the norm --
in four days,
my inbox will have six or seven messages in it
from six or seven women who would put me 
in their room of eight,
and each of those messages would have
the names of seven other women;
and each of those women would get e-mails
in four days
with seven more friends of friends.
And all these women let themselves think, for a little while at least:
May today there be peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.
We would create an endless chain of women
all living in a virtual place called
our collective brains,
and if we all worked together,
we might actually accomplish
something peaceful 
and good.

We'd be wise, too,
to invite men, as well.
Men who won't break the chain.

Inherent in this type of chain letter
is a belief 
that there is a potential magic
in collective action
when that action involves
positive thought,
or thought that is grounded
unselfishly, 
in love.

Now that's worth more than a dollar.

~
At the heart of the chain letter,
even the evil chain letter,
are some essential human
emotions:
hope and fear, and
they are two sides
of the same coin
that we tender as we
plan for the future.

We hope for more money;
we fear someone will 
kill us
before we get more money,
and we fret over that
and then
we do nothing;
and nothing happens to us.


Society has a job
to keep us from
deceiving and destroying one another,
but that job would be easier
if people took the risk
to trust, 
to show love,
to love 
and 
be loved.

Generally,
for most people, 
the concept of doing those things
is pretty geeky, stupid, weak
gullible, naive,

when in actual fact,
to do those things
takes the most superhuman strength 
one can imagine.
And that could
have the power
to make magic.



Naive,
young, even,
but look at me,
after 424 years
of watching people
deceive,
lie,
kill,
rape,
abuse,
tease,
torment,
etcetcetcetc,

this is the only thing that makes sense.

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