Should I Be Mad a Psychic Didn't Tell Me I Had Leukemia? (Opinion Needed)

Let's talk about the future, specifically yours.

Nov 26, 2024

I have visited psychics the same number of times I’ve had cancer (one).

Pop culture convinced me that my future would unfurl like a whisp of smoke, guided by a young, alluring gypsy-esque woman OR an old, terrifying gypsy-esque woman.

The former would seduce me to rob me; the latter would push me into an oven and turn me into a pie. It was a coin flip I was willing to make.

My psychic landed somewhere in between… a middle-aged woman wearing a sweater.

That’s not the uniform of the divine. That’s the uniform of your auntie, who smells like Patchouli Oil. Still, I’d long been frustrated at the universe for my leukemia diagnosis, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to hear if there was more trouble on the horizon.

I’m assuming you don’t have powers of premonition (rude of me), so here’s what’s ahead:

A short recap of my psychic encounter
An attempt at reading your mind (100% success rate)
A scarily accurate prediction about your future

“Hello? Is anyone here?”

There was no one in the store when I arrived for my session.

Located in a small shop above a McDonald’s in Montreal, I’d been drawn in by the promise of an affordable reading and the overwhelming smell of french fries.

I guess the psychic was busy with something in the back room, so I played a game of ‘How Many Dream Catchers Can I Count’ before she eventually appeared (I was up to 2,367 by the time I lost count). It’s low-hanging fruit to say she should have known I was coming. Michael Jordan didn’t nail every shot. Even the greats have off days, so I’ll let that slide.

Luckily, I’d seen enough TV shows and movies to know what to expect.

She’d tell me that my Grandpa is on the other side. He’d forgive me for smothering him in his sleep because he left me out of his will. I cry. It’s all very emotional. We all leave feeling better about ourselves. (Except Grandpa, obviously).

Instead, the psychic told me:

“You shouldn’t trust your friends”.

That’s a bold prediction. My friends once changed my Facebook sexual orientation to ‘Prefers Men’, and I didn’t notice for over three years — so I know I shouldn’t trust them around my social media. But the high school crew who supported me through my cancer ordeal are my best mates, and my life is richer for them.

🎯 Prediction Accuracy = 0%

Next, she told me:

“You’re a soul motivated by experiences, not the pursuit of material possessions.”

I’m a heavily tattooed man who was backpacking through Canada at the time, so I can’t give her too many points for that assumption. Also, I love material possessions. I’d rather cut off my arms than give up my Xbox (which would, admittedly, make it difficult to use).

🎯 Prediction Accuracy = 4%

Finally, she confidently said:

“You have always been blessed with good health.”

This was a huge relief because my oncologist had made a MASSIVE fuss about my cancer diagnosis. My family were worried (needlessly, it seems), and I’d gone through seven months of chemo because of it. I could have been home for lunch if that psychic had been in the ward.

🎯 Prediction Accuracy = -1,000,000,000 %

She finished our session by asking if I had any questions for her. A sceptic would say any psychic worth her salt crystals should have known my questions before I asked, but pobody is nerfect.

I was hoping this would be the psychic. Or, at the very worst, I’d be made into a hash brown to be served in the McDonald’s below her store.

I’m going to test my psychic abilities on you 🔮

I can’t get back the $15 Canadian dollars I spent on my psychic visit — but maybe I can peer through the veil and save you from a brewing thunderstorm.

Let me get in tune with my senses for a moment… OK. OK. I sensed you’d read this article, and that’s a sharp(ish) intuition right there. It’s more butter knife than steak knife, but it’s on the sharp spectrum.

Let me try again.

Please reach into your pocket. No, not that one. The other one. Yes, and inside that pocket, you will find… wait a moment. The image is forming in my mind. There’s something in there. Yes, I see it now.

It’s your hand. Your hand is in your pocket.

Ah, I sense you are disappointed in that prediction. Well, maybe my skills will develop over time. Or, setting up shop above a fast-food restaurant might be the missing ingredient. It feels like I’m putting the “ick” in psychic, so I’ll quit before I take someone’s third eye out.

If you do have any other questions about your future, please write them down on a piece of paper, crumple it up, and eat it. It’s clear I don’t have predictive powers because if I did, I would have seen a big fat cancer diagnosis coming.

99% of life can be explained by cause and effect.

My leukemia diagnosis was a shock because it was so devastatingly random.

Life is mostly a series of connected experiences. You do A, and B occurs. The outcome might not always be what you want or an immediate follow-up, but knowing why things happen can be comforting.

Here’s an example…

In the 6th grade, I made fun of a fellow student’s old, tattered hat. He reacted by ripping the brim off mine. He reached out and yanked it off like he was plucking a fresh apple from an apple vine (I don’t know how or where apples grow).

🍎 🤷‍♂️

In that situation, fault can be traced to action. Cause to effect.

The freakishly strong kid exited our confrontation with the brim of my hat while I was left wearing a skull cap, like a young Jew on the playground.

He only did that because I made fun of his hat when I could (and should) have been investing in property or buying bonds to prepare for my future instead of playing soccer with my school friends like a LOSER.

You could argue the whole thing only happened because of the poor stitching of some Bangladeshi kid who sewed my hat together in a factory. They’re not paid $0.42 cents an hour to produce low-quality headwear (or maybe that’s exactly what they’re paid for).

In this situation — like 99% of life — there was a cause and an effect.

The problem is that 1% of the time, things happen out of your control. These universal uppercuts leave you reeling — like my leukemia diagnosis. I didn’t get sick because I played under powerlines, licked batteries, or even inherited a faulty gene from my parents.

It was, as a doctor described it, cosmic chance. My cells flicked a switch, and my life changed forever. There was nothing I could do. No psychic could see it coming. It wasn’t my fault — and that made me so fucking angry.

Not everything is someone’s fault.

You’re dealing with similar feelings of frustration, anger and hurt in your life, too.

Maybe it's illness, injury, or even death that came swooping out of the blue. It could be the relationship that failed. A friendship that fizzled. Or opportunities that felt unfairly taken from you.

It's natural to feel slighted when life is singling you out. And when so much of your lived experience is built around cause and effect, the unexplainable can hurt the most.

The truth is, some things happen regardless of your effort and character. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault — that’s just life. You can do everything right but still lose. You can put in all the right ingredients, and the recipe still sucks.

From experience, holding onto the anger of these unfair outcomes is a counterweight that keeps you from being your best, happiest self.

Whatever it is in your life that feels unfair, there’s freedom in accepting there was no version of the ‘Trolley Problem’ that could have spared your fate.

My prediction for you…

You’ve got so much cool shit ahead of you. Even better, the constant flow of cause and effect means you’re the architect of your own life, which is empowering as fuck.

But there’ll be moments where the universe chooses you for suffering — or maybe someone you love. When that happens, you can find freedom by letting go of the need to assign blame.

The urge to answer “Why did this happen?” can send you on a never-ending goose chase. It’s not easy — because you’re conditioned to look for reasons, clues and closure — but accepting that some things are no one’s fault helps open up a new world of better, more positive thinking.

Try it the next time life gives you a middle finger.

This shift in perspective won’t make the bad stuff easier to digest. But it will allow you to call off the exhausting search for a culprit when there’s no one to blame and free up valuable energy you can use to find a better way forward.

There was no one to be angry about over my leukemia diagnosis. Letting go of my hurt and the rage I felt at some unseen universal force has helped me realise how far I’ve come in the 16 years since. It’s made me see how blessed I am to be here.

When I think of it that way, maybe the psychic was right…

Maybe I have always been blessed with good health after all.

With love,

New World Porter

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