The Words of a Palmist

Given my famous skepticism, it may surprise some to learn that this was not always the case. I was raised Catholic, though I left the church at age twelve. My exact spiritual identity changed over time, but, from about ages sixteen to nineteen, I was swept up in new age-type beliefs. A moment of doubt arose not because I was given much reason to doubt it, but because I was told something I did not want to hear. 

My higher education journey began when I was seventeen and started taking classes at the local community college. My intentions were to transfer to film school and eventually marry my high school sweetheart, my first significant other ever with whom I was currently in a long distance relationship as this person attended college in another state, after we both received our Bachelor’s degrees. I thought I had my entire future figured out. At this community college, being a first year student, I was pretty low on the list to register for classes and only made it into three. One of those three was Physical Anthropology, which I was sure to take with a professor who my sister had seen as something of a mentor before she began viewing him as ridiculous, the way she often became disillusioned with nearly all of those she had once admired. This professor was quite the character. He was a white man who had come from a conservative Catholic background in Ohio, but was radicalized by being forced to serve in the Vietnam War, after which he did not return to the United States for several years. When he returned to the US to study anthropology, his initial speciality was Chinese culture. I cannot recall his many off-topic rants about his life, but I do remember that he at some point turned toward Native American spirituality of the Lakota tradition. With his history of involving himself in so many spiritual traditions across cultures, I would come to wonder some years later if he had served as a partial inspiration for the Dr. Jonathan Wick character in Daniel Jose Older’s Shadowshaper. He was in his seventies and divorced and, according to my sources who knew him outside of school, known for his many dramatic relationships with women in the local Neopagan community. 

A mix of undiagnosed learning disabilities and stress from adapting to a long-distance relationship kept me performing particularly well in any of the classes I took that semester, but this professor’s familiarity with me through my sister meant that this professor remained cordial towards me. I was clearly entertained by his tangents and would spend the breaktimes examining all of the idols in the glass cases around the room. I never got to take his Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion class, which was both his favorite to teach and the one most students of his felt they learned the most from. The most entertaining artifact in his room was one of Darth Vader, standing out among the more conventional religious icons. I never got the spiel on it, but he felt Darth Vader represented something to do with technology gone wrong, fitting with notoriously anarcho-primitivist views. I did at least get the lecture on how he felt everything went wrong once humans developed agriculture. 

With Physical Anthropology being the most conventionally scientific of the three classes that he taught, one might think that this professor’s more spiritual views would not come up. Alas, he could not hold back his tangents on how astrology must be real and how certain groups of people could essentially communicate telekinetically. More relevant to the subject at hand was his interest in palmistry. This particular class focused on hands and patterns found in fingerprints. He inevitably brought up how it was so obvious that palmistry must be real. I do not even remember his justification other than that mentioning that medical doctors do now check your hands for signs of certain illnesses. Come breaktime, my curiosity got the best of me and I asked him what my palms had to say. 

He started with the left hand, the hand that says who you are. He mentioned that the rigidness of one line indicated my conservative tendencies, but assured me that it veered off into the section indicating imagination. He mentioned that a branch on one line indicated that I tend to go after people romantically who look a specific way. I do not remember everything he said about that hand or if he said much about it at all. It was the right hand, the hand of destiny, that stuck with me. 

He said that I would experience a career change when I was around thirty in something focusing on using my intellect. He said that I had a fame line connected to that line. That line also went through my love line. He said that the person that I would end up with for the rest of my life would be someone I meet around my thirties with some connection to my career and that they would be famous, that their fame and adherence to my aesthetic preferences would draw me in, and ultimately my destiny was to be known as the spouse of this person.

 As class carried on after the break, I was dumbstruck, barely able to pay attention. I stared at my hands. I was still a believer and had no reason to doubt what he had said, but I did not want to believe it. I was not meant to change careers; I was meant to become a filmmaker as soon as I got my Bachelor’s degree in four years. I would not meet my spouse through my future job and certainly not in my thirties, I had met my life partner already and we would have separate careers. I definitely was not going to be known as someone’s spouse; I was going to make my own fame as a cult filmmaker. 

I explained my palm reading the next time I saw my sister. She thought it all sounded quite accurate. My conservative tendencies manifested not in politics, but my restrained manner. Though I had only been in one relationship, I was shallow when it came to crushes and they all looked about the same. When it came to the idea of me being drawn in by some celebrity who happened to look the right way, all she said was “that sounds exactly like you.”

Over the next few years, my assured views of what my future would look like fell apart. The relationship that I was convinced that I was meant to stay in forever turned abusive and began to crumble, not before that person convinced me I lacked all creative talent, causing me to abandon the arts. At around the age of twenty, I became a complete skeptic and bordering on Nu-Atheist. I would definitely relax a bit over time, but I was far gone from the days of true, adherent belief. 

I am now in my thirties. I am in grad school for something quite different from film. Some might say the old professor was correct about me coming into a profession where my intellect is used more than anything else and just in time. I am currently single, so that love of my life has not been found. There were a few people since that first relationship who I thought were that to me or had the potential to become that, but I was wrong. Whether I meet that person tomorrow or I have to wait many more years, who knows. I certainly do not know anyone famous, let alone one that I am in love with. I joked in the past that I wished it was real because maybe that meant that my future spouse would have money and I would not have to worry about that anymore, but I suppose fame and money do not always go together. All I can think of that was my dad’s response, “Knowing you, they might be infamous.” In the end, it is best for me to carve out my own fate. If the dear professor’s prophecy turns out to be true, so be it. Whether it is adolescent dreams of a certain future or the words of a palmist, it is best to set that aside in favor of a future you can carve out for yourself.