Wish...

Once upon a time…
Isn’t that often how stories about wishes start?

I was thinking about the nature of wishing, especially the idea of wishing things were different (and what that might mean), when I noticed this ad further along the train station platform:

“Wish”

The trains sped past it, but the figure on the billboard (of course) stayed stationary. She and her wish stood separate from the action, as a procession of opportunities and destinations slid by.

Perhaps if wishing is attached to a sense of intention or motivation, it can provide a kind of springboard for change or growth.
But somehow, just the wishing on its own – all that ‘if only’ stuff about wishing that circumstances were different or that people would change or that relationships were ‘better’ – seems quite a bind.

For only seeing how things might be can sometimes blind us to how things are.

And, at some level, yearning for a situation other than the one we’re in seems to mean wishing our current life away…
And where might that leave us?

So what about you? Do you find yourself longing for things to magically change somehow? Wishing that a relationship would heal? Wishing things would ‘go back to normal’?

What might it be like to consider stopping for a moment? Maybe taking a look around and finding out how things actually are in your life? (not just where you might wish they'd be).
Perhaps it might be painful. Possibly even unbearable. But maybe strangely liberating, too.

For perhaps when we see where we’re actually standing, then the next step might become clearer, too. And the one after that.

And maybe that way we could gradually move a little closer to where we’d like to be, rather than be stuck always wishing from afar…
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(c) Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar 2010