What did you wish for over the holidays? Did you come up with any resolutions for the New Year? What filters did you put your wants through before they were spoken out loud or written down? Using a reality filter makes sense. We want to want things we have a hope of getting. Stretch the wanting too far into pure fantasy, and the unfulfilled dream will snap back and smack us. Get real or get disappointed, right?
Check out these wishes from very young children who called in to a radio show two days before Christmas to tell Santa what they wanted:
- an airport
- a cow
- a reindeer
- a moon ferry
They brought yearnings up from the depths of their souls, spilling them out into the ears of thousands in their chirpy, excited, undoubting voices.
We forget that wishing from the soul involves lifting our feet off the ground to gain the perspective of joy. Forget the weight of reality. Rise up and look around. The far horizons aren’t even within sight.
“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”
~ Gloria Steinem
Flickr photo credit: One Wish, by Jenny Romney.
3 Comments
Meredith has an imaginary friend, a Puma she has named Azabel. At her Santa photo this year, when he asked her what she wished for, she paused. I was expecting to hear her request a toy or something along those lines. Instead she said “I wish I could see my friend Azabel.”
this is such a great reminder…I need to wish more…multi-dimensionally. I wish for…scintillating flowery surprises. and a horse.
Those comments remind me of something my younger brother said when he was about five (he’s 45 now). I actually have a tape recording of it. It goes something like this:
“I wish Mom had arms coming out of her hips, and legs coming out of her shoulders. Then she could just ROLL AROUND, like a wheel.”
What was beneath that wish, I wonder? What did he yearn for that that wish would make possible? Perhaps only the novelty of a mother who could roll like a wheel, but, knowing him, there was probably something deeper going on, too.