#315 / Wishbone

 

It's some time, still, to Thanksgiving, and so I was a bit surprised, last Wednesday morning, to find the wishbone pictured above gracing the ledge above the kitchen sink. It's a chicken wishbone. I'm betting that my wife placed it there to dry it out and to use it in a demonstration of the traditional "Make A Wish" wishbone, providing this instruction to my young grandson, who may well not know about the tradition.

Seeing this wishbone made me think about whether I approved of the custom of "wishing" for something. I tend to think of myself as a person dedicated to the proposition that you have to "act" to get something to happen, and I am thus generally of the mind that, "wishing won't make it so." If you'd like to hear Phil Everly sing a song to that effect, click on the link to the video I have provided. 

Upon reflection, and certainly not repudiating my conviction that it is "action," not "wishing for it," that will make it possible for us to change the world, I decided that there is a real value in the "wishbone" tradition. After all, as those who have read some of my past blog postings might know, my entire family history is based on my father's insistence that "if you don't have a dream, Gary, you can never have a dream come true." 

"Dreaming" and "wishing" are not "self-actuating," however. I will never forget that. Still, dreaming and wishing are ways by which we open ourselves to "possibility." We realize our possibilities through taking action, not by wishing that our hopes might be realized, but we need to be able to envision what it is that we would actually like to do, what is "possible." Once we know that, we can set about doing what's needed to make those wishes "come true." 

I want my grandson - I want all of us - never to forget that we can accomplish anything - our dreams and nightmares both. 

"Wishing won't make it so." The Everly Brothers are right about that. But let's consider our "wishes" as promises to ourselves. When we "wish," we are envisioning the possible, and are saying to ourselves, and to all within range of the power of the wish, that this, this "wish," is what we want to do. 

Doing it, of course.... That comes next! 

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Image Credit:

Gary A. Patton, personal photo