Why Do Fortune-Tellers Predict Misfortune? The Business of Selling Anxiety and a Senior Monk's Unexpected Answer

The other day, I read an advice column that made me laugh out loud.

The person seeking advice had become thoroughly depressed after a fortune-teller said, “Something unpleasant will happen to you soon.”

The columnist’s response was wonderfully refreshing.

“Being told that something unpleasant will happen has already caused something unpleasant to happen. You don’t need to listen to a fortune-teller like that.”

Exactly right.

Nothing has happened yet, but one remark from the fortune-teller has darkened the person’s mood and filled each day with anxiety.

No one knows whether the prediction will come true. But the fortune-teller has already succeeded in making the client unhappy.

Happy Clients Are Bad for Fortune-Tellers

Why do fortune-tellers go out of their way to predict an unpleasant future in the first place?

From a business perspective, the answer is simple.

“Your life will be smooth sailing from now on. There is no need for you to visit a fortune-teller again.”

If they said that, the client would never return.

But what happens if they say, “Something bad will happen to you soon”?

The client becomes anxious. Then, to relieve that anxiety, the client visits the fortune-teller again.

“How can I avoid it?”

“Your luck will change next month, so please come back around then.”

And just like that, a repeat customer is born.

First, plant the anxiety. Then sell the method for relieving it.

It is the classic scheme of starting a fire and then selling the pump.

Better still, this business has a convenient feature.

If something bad happens, the prediction was correct. If nothing happens, the precautions successfully prevented it.

Whatever the outcome, the fortune-teller can claim the credit.

It is a remarkably polished business model.

When Life Is Going Smoothly, People Go Looking for Anxiety

What makes this even more troublesome is how neatly human psychology fits the business model.

Work and family life are both going well, and there are no particular problems.

You should simply be happy, yet for some reason, you begin to feel uneasy.

“Things cannot possibly be going this well.”

“Isn’t something bad about to happen?”

And so you begin searching for reasons to worry.

Then a fortune-teller says, “Something unpleasant will happen to you soon.”

For some reason, it sounds convincing.

“I knew it!”

What exactly you “knew” is unclear.

You created the anxiety yourself and merely asked the fortune-teller to certify it.

A fortune-teller who wants to sell anxiety and a client who wants to buy it: supply and demand match perfectly.

“The Secret to Avoiding Hardship Is to Experience It”

This reminds me of a story I once heard somewhere about a respected Buddhist monk.

“How can I avoid painful experiences?”

The monk reportedly gave an unexpected answer.

“Experience them.”

It sounds like a Zen riddle at first, but on reflection, it is perfectly rational.

It is impossible to arrange a life in which nothing unpleasant ever happens.

We become ill. We fail at work. We lose people who matter to us.

No matter how carefully we live, we cannot completely avoid painful events themselves.

If so, rather than fearing a misfortune that may or may not occur, we can face it when it actually does.

Experiencing a painful event and suffering for years from fear of that event are two different things.

The latter is like deliberately experiencing a misfortune in advance when it has not even happened.

The monk’s words were probably not a method for eliminating hardship. They were a way to escape the state of mind in which fear of hardship makes even our present life painful.

Deal with Misfortune When It Happens

Suppose a fortune-teller says, “Something unpleasant will happen next month.”

Something unpleasant may indeed happen. Or nothing may happen at all.

But if you believe the prediction and spend the entire month depressed, at least one month of unhappiness is guaranteed.

And that unhappiness was created neither by fate nor by God.

It was created by one remark from a fortune-teller.

Some misfortunes in life simply cannot be avoided.

Those are troublesome enough already. Why should we also experience misfortunes that have not happened yet in advance?

When things are going well, simply be happy. If something unpleasant happens, deal with it then.

Life will deliver painful experiences without any help. There is no need to pay someone to tell you the delivery date.