Wishes

Project Blog It

A wish. A look to the future. Something more than a hope.

A wish is as often unrealistic as it is possible.

“I wish 5:00 would come.” “I wish I could fly.”

Whereas as a hope tends toward something that carries with it possibility.

“I hope it doesn’t rain.” “I hope she recovers quickly.”

Wishes are dreams, fantasies of a world we imagine. They are unlimited in their possibility and their impossibility, subject only to the limitations of our own imaginations.

“When you wish upon a star. . .” “Make a wish and blow.”

A wish, at best, marks a future possibility. At worst, it marks an impossibility free of time, existing now and always in its own inability to ever be realized.

I will never be able to fly without the aid of a mechanical device, and lots of money.

A wish is an escape from the here and now. Perhaps its benefit lies in its power to move us, if only in the moment it takes to construct the wish, from the place of our existence devoid of the object of the wish. It is idealism. It is the dream of something else, something better, something magical. It is the construction of a world, a situation, an experience as we wish it could be.

And though a wish is not a hope, the fact that we can make a wish indicates that we do have some hope for the future. And I think that’s a good thing.


Please check the blogs listed on the right for companion pieces to this week's prompt.

Next week's prompt: Fright.