Wishing, as well as one can

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, memoirs, spiritual practices

"If wishes were horses, all beggars would ride" underlay Noelle Oxenhandler's skepticism about wishing. In The Wishing Year: A House, a Man, my Soul—a Memoir of Fulfilled Desire, Ms Oxenhandler begins with a disaster she'd brought upon herself, one whose guilt and latent effects she bore for seven years. She begins to hope things can be better, but though she has been a practicing Buddhist for years, her moralistic upbringing makes her feel guilt about hoping, let alone wishing, for anything for herself.

I can sympathize with her in this: well-deserved depression seems to require about seven years to work itself out. It takes longer for most of us to get over what we have done to others than for troubles that came upon us.

I found it interesting to make this short journey through self-denoted New Age practice and philosophy, in which thoughts are more real than things (or at least, that is the ideal to attain). I found, as the author did, a sad juxtaposition between her gradual embrace of "active wishing" and her dying friend George's fervid embrace of Christian Science. His renunciation of medical intervention in favor of CS healing practices, or rather thoughts, may have hastened his death, but may not have: the power of our mind over our own body is well-attested, though not reliable. Her book is in part dedicated to his memory.

What was his faith but a kind of active wishing also? Nonetheless, there is a definite disjoint between CS and New Age wishing. The author was impelled by a somewhat lesser level of desperation: she was in no imminent danger of dying, after all. She just needed three things: Restoration for her soul (and a pity it is that she never once mentions Psalm 23, though she quotes other Bible passages), a home she can afford to own, and a man (she doesn't say "husband", and so far as can be told, her wished-for lover is not yet her husband).

A Pentecostal preacher I know, wiser than most, once preached, "Yes, God may heal what ails you, but you're still going to die." Ms Oxenhandler had surrounded herself with a large collection of books about wishing. She found most of them unsatisfactory, filled with very fuzzy thinking. Yet the worst of them didn't go so far as to advise wishing to live forever. Somehow, we all know that isn't in the cards (Yes, I know that expression refers to Tarot). At least by mid- to late adolescence we realize we're not here forever.

So what do we desire for the time we are here? Is it OK to wish for world peace and for a better stock portfolio also? Why is one frowned upon and not the other? Month by month the author struggles with this, through her wishing year, in which she does indeed attain her three wishes. She also gains a number of new friends, gets a trip to Hawaii partly subsidized, is able to help her mother go through a troublesome transition in living arrangements when others can't, and finds new confidence in her ability to cope with life as she finds it.

Though her wishes come true through a few surprising twists, none is totally unexpectable. It is pretty clear by the end of the book that wishing, while it seems to manipulate the world, really works its magic on the wishing one. By wishing, with strength and in detail, we focus our own minds, and are thus more prepared to recognize opportunities that typically come and go unnoticed. She tells the story of a relative who was a poor salesman; so poor that, when he was poised to ring a doorbell, would say, "Ah, she von't buy anyt'ing" and leave. Maybe a bit of active wishing would have impelled him to at least ring the bell.

Unless we are wishing for the truly unattainable, chances to help our own wishes come true arrive frequently. In another context, Louis Pasteur wrote, "Fortune favors the prepared mind." Whether we pray for our desires, or use wishing (not being the praying sort), the exercise can prepare us to see what we needed when it arrives.