Make a Wish

“As the psychologist Marion Woodman says, ‘Most of us are dragged toward wholeness.’ For many of us, the being dragged toward wholeness happens precisely through the mysterious process of wishing: through the gaps it exposes, the new edges it drives us toward, the deeper layers of longing it reveals.” ---from The Wishing Year by Noelle Oxenhandler

I’d had the pictures in a pile on my dining room table for more than a month.

Cut from various magazines during half a year or more of perusing, they represented bold wishes and deep desires – heart-thoughts around which I’d been tiptoeing for the past couple of years.

I wanted to go there, I wanted to do that.

There were no maybes as I clipped the picture of a woman atop an elephant in India or the simple floor plan for a two-bedroom seaside cottage. Each picture had spoken to me, not in a hesitant murmur, but in a clear, vibrant, edged-with-exhilaration voice that couldn’t be ignored.

My intention was to turn the pictures into a collage and display it in a place where I would see it, and think about it, every day. Yet I never seemed to remember to buy the poster board or the glue stick or the frame I needed. Collecting the pictures had been easy, but I was avoiding the next step – the more difficult step – that would shout out to the Universe “These are the things I really, really, really, really want in my life!” and I wasn’t sure why.

The answer came to me in an interesting little book about the power of wishes. I’d first read about “The Wishing Year” by Noelle Oxenhandler in a magazine, then a friend who’d read the book thought I’d enjoy it, too. I requested it at the library, and last week I settled down to read it.

I knew that my pictures were wishes – very personal wishes – but it took a passage in the book to make me realize why I could never seem to remember the poster board, glue stick or frame.

“Wishing makes us vulnerable – in many ways,” Oxenhandler says. “For one thing, it makes us vulnerable to disappointment – to the possibility that the arrow of our wish will miss the mark, that we will overshoot or fall short and thus break the appointment with our heart’s desire. How much easier to play it safe and never take that risk – by keeping our desires diffuse, unfocused, unarticulated, undirected (or in a pile on the dining room table!).”

I’ve done some wild and crazy things in my life (we will talk about New Mexico another time!), but mostly I’ve played it safe. I’ve also made a couple of bad choices in the past three years, so my faith in my ability to choose wisely in some matters has been a tad low.

But I’ve made some excellent choices, too; choices that have benefited me in ways I’d never imagined. I’ve wished for some really good things, like my dog Gracie and my job at the library, and my wishes have come true in positive and positively amazing ways.

So today, I bought the poster board, the glue stick and the frame. I sat at my dining room table, took a deep breath and stepped closer to the edge. I made my collage, and then I hung it in a special place.

I’ve offered up my deeper layers of longing, and I’ve opened myself to “the vast reservoir of possibility that is always there for us, lying in wait, ready to be tapped….”

It's a little scary, but I haven't been this excited in a long, long time!