A few days ago, I asked the girl sitting next to me on the C1 to West what she thought of ghosts. She replied as many of us would here in our enlightenment-descended ivory tower: “I don’t really believe in that sort of thing.” I nodded to myself, satisfied with the answer, if a little disappointed in how much I agreed with it. Encountering opinions I already hold does not an interesting column, or life, make.
But then she went on. “I wish I did believe, sometimes. I think the idea is beautiful.” At that, she trailed off, turned away. There was a diffident look in her eye, as though she felt she had said something too stupid or outlandish to satisfy the question of a wild-haired freshman catastrophically late to his Psych 101 lecture. As my professor spoke on about the evolutionary roots of human altruism, I couldn’t stop toying with the thought of beautiful ideas I didn’t believe in.
It seemed somehow childish to want to believe in something simply because it was beautiful. As a good philosophical skeptic, I knew that every proper belief must be forged in experimental fire and held aloft by evidential iron. Even cogito ergo sum was suspect. Descartes couldn’t have known what we know now of neuroscience and free will, couldn’t have realized that, like it or not, everything we are is the product of a self-regulating chemical reaction that generates the illusion of thinking and being. If that seemed cold, or sad, or reductionist, I reminded myself that the universe didn’t care what I thought, that the foundational equations of physics that govern equally everything from quarks to societies to superclusters use no variable that takes my opinion into consideration.
And yet. I don’t act as though I believe love is a chemical, as if the only reason I try to comfort a friend after a rough day is, as my psych professor hinted while I daydreamed, a desire to increase my chance of producing offspring. I don’t give hugs to get serotonin. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how deep the schism was between the beliefs I stated in my Philosophy 103 papers and the form my actions took. If I truly believe that the idea of altruism is a psychosocial construct, then why do I engage in it, if not for its beauty? And if I’m willing to cross this bridge from logic to life for the idea of kindness, then why shouldn’t I also run across it chasing ghosts?
I don’t have an answer, so before I get caught in the crossfire between accusations of intellectual laziness from skeptics, allegations of cold inhumanity from romantics, and assertions of deep-seated inconsistency from everyone else, let’s move on to my grandma.
Of all the people I surveyed for this column, my grandmother was one of the only definite believers in ghosts. In fact, she was a definite believer in all manner of phantasms, imps, spirits, and various other assorted malevolent forces. She also, as I knew well before asking, took elaborate steps to protect herself from these supernatural ne’er-do-wells. Some of my most vivid memories of visits to her home are associated with these measures of protection: tripping over the lines of coarse salt that protected doorways, sneezing at the scent of the lavender incense that permeated the living room, being gently scolded for trimming my nails on Fridays (your guess for that last one is as good as mine). When I was younger, I found these little rituals rather irritating: even if ghosts did exist, why on earth would an immortal spirit imbued with arcane supernatural might quail at the sight of salt and smell of lavender?
But looking back, I find myself realizing that far from irritation, the thought of these idiosyncrasies fills me with feelings of love: memories of the taste of her omelettes made pleasantly crunchy by the flaky sea salt that was also used to line doorways, of quietly reading in a room suffused with the smell of lavender. I think there’s an elegance to this, the idea that fear of the unearthly can lead to very real love. In some ways, my grandmother is right: the kind of ghosts she fears have yet to make their way into her home. Better yet, my memories of those days spent with her are pure as salt and sweet as lavender: for that, I thank the ghosts. And I still don’t trim my nails on Fridays.
After I talked to my grandmother, I asked a friend to read a draft of this column. They liked it, but politely suggested that it wasn’t really about ghosts; instead, it was essentially a column about me being “eloquently confused.” Maybe they’re right, and I’ve spent two weeks on a column that’s turned an interesting supernatural premise into so much navel-gazing.
Or perhaps the problem is with our limited definition of ghost, with our inability to make room between Casper and Bloody Mary for subtler shades: the odd, will-o-wisp light in the eyes of a girl on a bus, haunted by her own disbelief; the peculiar way a room seems to smell of smoke and lavender when I become engrossed in a book; the meaning I try to convey to my readers between my eloquently confused words.
I still don’t think I believe in ghosts. But I’m going to start looking for them anyway: in eyes, in smoke, in words on pages. It can seem to us in our institutions of higher learning that belief is too facile. We would do well to remember that disbelief can also be a choice too easily made. There’s a narrow gap between those parallel paths, a twilight zone between blind faith and cold denial: a space well-suited for ghost hunting. I hope I’ll see you there.
Mihir Bellamkonda is a Trinity Freshman. His column, "small questions," runs on alternate Tuesdays.
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Mihir Bellamkonda is a Trinity junior and a Managing Editor of the Editorial page. His column, "small questions," runs on alternate Tuesdays.