I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

Here's a message to those who feel they must forward on chain emails, or endure countless bouts of bad luck:

Stop it.

Just stop it.

Mostly these start with 'I have to send this on and stop myself from getting bad luck'. Sometimes they start with "I have to send this on so you can invoke St. Christopher to break the chain." Or, how about this? "The Lord wants me to bless 5 people with this email, so you send it on to 4 others and send me a copy."

Who thought up this craziness? Far from being ‘luck-bringers’, these are fear-based messages that incite you to find four to ten of your least-likely-to-be-angered-by-you-dumping-chain-emails-on-them friends. This is insanity, as though if by foisting fear-based messages on your friends, you would then earn yourself some good luck. How can this be? Surely it will only bring bad karma back to you in the form of....guess what? more fear-based actions required on your part. And the people you send these to cannot then be called your friends because why would you do this to them? You are not thinking of them. You are thinking of how to throw poison on them, i.e., bad luck, in order to keep it supposedly off yourself.

How nice of you. What a friend.

And who sent this shot of 'do it or you'll have bad luck too' message to you? One who feels you are clearly an expendable friend (a null concept if ever there was one) because they feel comfortable throwing this sort of nonsense on to you.

    As to your fear of breaking the chain and creating bad luck, surely you must come to see that it is ONLY by breaking the chain that you can create good luck, because now you have stopped this chain of ugliness from virally spreading to others through your own hand. Therefore, you have removed one more piece of fear, anxiety, and annoyance from this planet, and that can never be anything but to the good. If anyone sends you a chain email, and apologizes for doing this to you, then you must surely see how they know they are doing something very wrong to you by spreading it on. There is no love or luck in these emails, despite the nice platitudes in the openings. They are meant to spread fear...fear of bad luck. One creates one’s own luck, and it surely good luck is not created by spreading something ugly and fear-based to others. That could only bring bad luck back to you.

    We have all of us so many chances to love one another openly and honestly. Why not do that instead? If anyone sends you a chain email, send this posting in an email in response back and let them know that they are not doing you any service by forwarding you such things. You can also see what a ‘friend’ they think you are, and what a ‘friend’ the person who sent that to them thinks they are. These kinds of ‘friends’ no one needs, but maybe you can help them realize this error and stop sending it on to others.

That would be a mark of true friendship.