Who Stole the Wishes from the Wishing Well??
I love wishing wells. I love that someone goes to a fountain, makes a wish, and invites a greater power in to help. I love looking into the water and seeing hundreds of coins, glimmering with hope. And I love that, in the midst of hustle, the city of New York has reserved little spaces for magic.
Magical mornings seem to be a touch more bearable than non-magical mornings, so I have rerouted my morning walk from the subway to include one of these magical fountains. I count on it to be brimming with water and wishes, giving this uncaffeinated New Yorker the boost I need to deal with caffeinated New Yorkers. But this past Friday, I walked by, and... NO WISHES!! Plenty of water. Not a single penny.
Maybe it's silly to care about this, but it actually made me sad. So sad, in fact, that I thought about running to the bank, withdrawing a million(ish) pennies, and filling that well up myself, right then, before it got too embarrassed in front of the other wishing wells. I certainly have a million(ish) wishes. No problem there. But sadly, I cannot say the same about pennies, so instead I let my grief morph into fury, as I focused on one question: "WHO stole the wishes from the wishing well??"
I spent the rest of my walk compiling a list of all the possible causes for the The Great Wish Drought of 2015. Here's what I got:
1) Some meanie came in and stole everyone's wishes, probably cashing them in for a scratch ticket. I'm hoping this person was after the money and not the wishes. Oddly, that seems more forgivable.
2) The city regularly clears out coins from fountains when they get too crowded, making room for more wishes. Maybe they even donate the money to charity and keep the cycle of wishes in motion! (Okay.. leaving La La Land now).
3) People have grown disenchanted. I hope this isn't it. Even more than I hope people aren't stealing wishes.
4) People are so used to getting anything they can't hold in their hands for free that they simply make wishes and leave no offering for the water gods.
5) People have learned that spending money on wishes is not as productive as spending money on the plan they have made to help them achieve their goal.
I'm really routing for Number Five. Number Five is actually something I could learn from. As an avid dreamer, and occasional doer, I have tossed many a penny into many a well over the years, given my wish to the water, and then... waited. But that isn't how wishes come true.
The wish is just the starting point. It's the signal that we need to GO somewhere else. And that place is often located very far from where we are. In between those two spots lies the plan: the steps necessary to take us from Point Wish to Point Wish-Come-True. So.. maybe we should be throwing pennies into the plan, not the wish.
Plans are long and grueling and expensive, often requiring classes, practice, travel, networking, and other unglamorous building blocks that cost a lot of pennies. They also cost a lot of time, effort, diligence, heartbreak, and stress. Basically, plans are work. And I think they sometimes get overlooked because we're distracted by the romantic notion that if we just trust in life and water-dwelling deities, everything will work out the way it's supposed to. I do think there is a time and place for that attitude. But if we want something specific, we need to participate in the journey.
As Iyanla Venzant says, "The only way to get where you want to be is to do what needs to be done to get there." She's a genius. It's great to put a wish out into the world, generate positive energy, and get ourselves excited to work toward our goals. But then, we have to figure out what needs to be done to get there, and do it.
I know, Number One is probably what happened in the case of the missing wishes, but I'm going to pretend it isn't. I'm going to pretend that everyone got really driven and goal-oriented, and they are using their money pragmatically to help advance them on their paths. I'm going to use those (possibly imaginary) people as inspiration to help me focus on the plan more than the wish. And I'm going to throw one final penny into that poor, lonely fountain before starting on that last thing I just said I was going to do.
Love Love Love,
Kat
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