Magical thinking is the mind's response to situations it can't control — the rituals, the superstitions, the bargains, the if-then thinking that imposes a kind of agency on circumstances that don't actually respond to it. It's often private and always a little embarrassing. It works as long as the catastrophe doesn't come.

Anonymous thoughts about magical thinking posted here are from people who bargain — the honest account of the rituals and superstitions that emerge when the stakes are high and the control is absent.