Today I watched Episode 7, The Séance, which originally aired on November 26, 1951.
In this episode, Lucy is fascinated by horoscopes and numerology. Ricky’s horoscope says that it is a bad day for him, so Lucy insists that he say no to everything.
When the telephone rings, Lucy thinks she is speaking to the barber and tells him that Ricky does not want a haircut. Unfortunately, she is actually speaking to Mr. Merriweather, an important producer who wants to offer Ricky a job!
Ricky is furious, and the usual craziness follows as Lucy and the others try to persuade Mr. Merriweather to reconsider.
They eventually stage a séance so he can communicate with Tilly, whom Lucy assumes was his late wife. Ethel plays the medium while Lucy and Fred provide the voices from beyond. Mr. Merriweather is thrilled to communicate with Tilly, completely unaware that the “spirits” are actually Lucy and Fred.
As I watched the episode, I started thinking about how often we want something so badly that we choose to believe what we want to believe—even when we don’t have all the facts.
Sometimes the truth is right in front of us, but we don’t ask questions. Maybe we are afraid of the answers. Maybe we already sense the truth but don’t want to acknowledge it because it would be too painful to bear.
I remember being cheated on when I was in my twenties. Looking back, I can see that I chose not to notice the signs. He was always gone. He constantly had something else to do. He made silly excuses, and the number of times he called me began to change.
But I didn’t confront any of it because, in my mind, it couldn’t be true. There was no possibility that someone could cheat on me. I also wanted to be in a relationship. I didn’t want to be alone.
It wasn’t until he broke up with me that I finally saw everything I had ignored—and it all came crashing down.
Looking back, I wish I had put on my big-girl pants, acknowledged the signs, and confronted him. I wish I had disturbed the temporary peace I was protecting instead of waiting for the landslide that eventually came.
Of course, hindsight is 20/20, so I cannot be too hard on the younger version of myself. She was doing what she knew how to do at the time.
But maybe that experience is one reason I eventually learned to go straight through the middle of difficult things instead of trying to move around them.
Ignorance can feel like bliss for a while. But when that ignorance wears off, the price of finally knowing the truth can hurt like hell.
My goal now is to be self-aware enough to say:
“I really don’t want to face this—but let’s take it head-on, because going around it will probably hurt a lot more.”
The truth rarely becomes easier because we ignore it. Sometimes protecting our real peace means being willing to disturb our temporary peace first
