Wish List

I strongly believe in a spiritual underpinning to the universe. I try to access it through Jewish ritual, by spending my time as much as possible with what is real, and by keeping my eyes and heart wide open. I don't subscribe to psychic stuff. (Ok, I confess, I love the occasional tarot card reading but not like I love the Rabbi of Ger.) 

But I do love this.

Specifically, I am a sucker for the exercise called "Pot of Goals" on page 81.It takes 7 days. On Day 1, number a page from 1 to 20. After each number, you write, "I wish.." Then you fill it in with wishes for "what you want to do, to be, to experience, more than on what you want to consume or own...for example, wish for 'living in the mountains in a big house' instead of 'a big house in the mountains.'" 

Don't think too much about each wish. Just write.

And then do follow the rest of this schedule:

• Day 2, narrow your list to 12 wishes. 
• Day 3, to nine wishes. 
• Day 4, to seven wishes.
• Day 5, to five wishes.
• Day 6, to three wishes.
• Day 7, to three final wishes. Which, Sonia says, usually reflect your truest desires at this time.

She says to tape this list somewhere where you see it everyday. Me, I just put it away. And when I check back with it a year or so later, well...damn, stuff has come true.


Ok, I get the part where the simple act of focusing helps drill a clean hole into your subconscious so that your soul's yearnings drive your conscious choices. There's no psychic voodoo attached to writing "I wish I could go on an adventure trip every year" one year and finding that two years later, I have hiked the Cotswolds and The Jesus Trail. To writing "I wish my quilting would be more artistic" and then finding myself a student of Jude Hill's Spirit Cloth. Or scribbling "I wish I took myself more seriously as a writer" and finding myself the author of a blog.

But here's where the soundtrack gets a little eerie and the spirit world starts to giggle at my arrogance. One year, in desperation, I wished that "I get to be in my backyard without the insanity of the Evil Neighbor." (A guy who, at his finest, would leave his radio outside blasting Rush Limbaugh into my yard while he ducked back into his house.) We all know you can't change other people. So you'd expect my wish would produce a change in my behavior, right? That I would find my way to tolerance and equinamity?


Guess again. Because my wish for peace and quiet in my backyard culminated in him getting 10 years of Federal prison for embezzlement and fraud and money laundering.  How does THAT work??? (But the real moral is just don't fuck with me, baby, because I am Connected!!)

So I am a believer after all. I thought I would try a new list tonight, when the New Year's zeitgeist is all about resolutions, intentions, whatever you want to call it.

I numbered from 1 to 20.

And then I just stared. Because at this moment, well, I feel no yearning. No deep desire to change anything. Oh sure, there are those 20 pounds, but they've been on the list so long that the statue of limitations has kicked in. And yes, I want to learn how to work those stupid remotes,but that's about as realistic as "world peace" in a beauty pageant.

So this new year's eve, how about I turn instead from wishing to enjoying? A few glasses of Prosecco, my homemade mu-shu chicken with lettuce wraps and my homemade hot and sour soup, with that man of my dreams.  After the kitchen is clean, we get a rerun of Columbo and maybe a movie (although there is an inverse relationship between drinking Prosecco and remaining awake.)

And before I do, let me say this.You have all touched me so much this year with your attention to my words. Thank you so much.

And the best of all your wishes for you in 2014.