Tag Wishes

Non-Wishes for the New Year

Michael 9 Comments

Happy New Year! Did you wash your hair this morning? I do hope that wasn’t too personal. I ask only because if you did, you are pressing your luck. Just as you would be if you swept your floors this morning. Odd superstition those two are. You don’t want to wash away the good luck of the year. Or sweep your good fortunes outside. It’s equally odd “they” have no qualms with vacuuming or taking a shower, presumably while wearing a shower cap. What other bad luck omens should we be avoiding this New Year day?

On the good side of the omens, there are plenty of options for leveraging luck and prosperity. Are you wearing red underwear? Oh darn, there I go again. Too personal. If you have already selected your undergarments and they aren’t of that shade you can still almost guarantee good luck by having lentils for dinner or are you sticking with the old standby of pork and sauerkraut. Whatever you eat be sure to serve pomegranate for fruit course. And don’t forget to roll an empty suitcase around the house if you’re looking to fill the year with travel. Ah, travel. Where would I go? Where would you go?

Good omens, bad omens, good and bad luck. New Year’s, Halloween, and Fridays the Thirteenth have to be the most superstitious days on the calendar. The most superstitious superstition may be the least well known. A wish made exactly at midnight between New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day will surely come true. Most people are too busy looking for someone to kiss and trying to remember the words to Auld Lang Syne to worry about making wishes. The wish making doesn’t happen until hours later when many are wishing they hadn’t opened that last bottle of champagne.

It’s a terrible thing to know you might have had a wish come true and missed your chance. But that chance is a lot chancier than you might think. It must be made right at midnight, the magic moment. It’s the most chancy of good luck omens because nobody knows exactly when midnight is. That’s more obviously true this year than most. This is a leap year so we are more aware that man’s idea of a 24 hour day and a 365 day year are no match for nature’s more exact timing. Even our quadrennial intercalary addition of a spare day in February isn’t enough, hence the random “leap second” inclusions from time to time. The wish grantors aren‘t going to accept man’s claim of when midnight happens. No, it must be the one, true midnight, and even when that happens changes with every westerly taken step.

Perhaps it is just as well. Wishes are no way to go through life. I know. I’ve spent the equivalent of a lifetime wishing for a better life, not knowing then the one I have that was made by hope and faith and hard work, positive energy and prayer and meditation, beats the heck out of one built on wishing. Knowing wishes rarely come true, and never without exacting some price, has been freeing. Among other things, freeing me to find someone to kiss and to remember those darned lyrics.

Happy New Year. May all your wishes never come true.

It’s time to look back at 2023. Will you be wishing for any do overs. In the most recent Uplift we look at the perils of the redo versus the practicality of the refine. Read it here!

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I Wish I May…

Michael 4 Comments

You’ve seen them. Perhaps a newspaper feature article on a local 100 year old, or a minor celebrity suddenly experiencing the harder side of life after having been diagnosed with an incurable (or even a curable) disease, or maybe even an ad for a home care agency home hospice program. What is it that that you’ve seen or heard or read? That earnest looking and sounding unfortunate soul baring his or her life to the camera, reporter, microphone, or ad agency saying “my one last wish, my most hopeful dream, the one thing I’m most looking forward to, is dying in my own bed. It’s what keeps me going.” Well I’ll tell you right now, if you ever hear me utter such nonsense just shoot me where I stand. Unless I’m standing in my own home, then take me across the street or at least out back first.

How bad does your life have to be that the only thing you’re looking forward to, the one thing you want most out of that life, your biggest dream for yourself, is to be dead. Yes, when you die in your own home you end up dead. Something we all realize we will someday be but something most people would not aspire to, brain-addled suicide bombers notwithstanding.

I don’t know what I want most out of my life. I know what I want out of my life most but those aren’t the same thing. My biggest dream probably depends on what’s annoying me most on a particular day. Too many therapists, too many phone calls, and way behind on sweepstakes entries – I dream of the solitude of an uninhabited (except for me, select guest(s), and a killer bartender) island. Too many healthy meals too many days in a row – pizza from a pizza shop known for as many toppings (please, pineapple is not a pizza topping under any circumstance) as one can humanly get to stay on a pizza crust.

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Not only does “die in my own bed” sound way too dramatic for the average Jo or Joe, it’s quite unfair to those who share that home or are expecting to have it on the real estate market next week. Dying in life (I’m not sure how else to phrase that) isn’t like dying in the movies. Most people don’t smile, say goodbye to the assembled group of friends and family, then nod off just as the last relative passes by. There are noises, smells, and often a lot of movement before and after the fact. There’s cleaning up to do and people to call like in the absence of home hospice, 911. I’d rather have understaffed nursing personnel handle the dirty details or more frankly the cleaning detail, than a loved family member. Of course if you are really annoyed at your family that day, well, who am I to judge?

If someone was to put a gun to my head and say I must come up with my one greatest wish or I’d get it right there I’d probably say to live at least one more day. It seems so much more wish worthy. I wonder if under the same circumstances those with that burning desire to die in their own beds would as calmly as they could, tell the gunman, “So, can you drive me home first?”