As the world is now in a very different place than it was at the beginning of 2020, I feel grateful to have the opportunity of asking questions that may be connected with making a new start in life; or resuming from where it was left since the recent world changes.

For many of us may be going through endings and new beginnings. Although they are part of anybody’s life, it is not always that straight forward to sail through a stormy sea.

So, perhaps it is an appropriate time to consider wishes.

When making a new start how is it possible to actively and consciously be on the road of seeing an aspiration, a wish or a desire being transformed into living reality over time? It seems that an aspiration is the precursor of a wish. Or, it may be that you are experiencing more wishes than aspirations; each person may have a different situation. For the purpose of this blog post, aspirations and wishes were considered together in the reflections below.

Wanting or needing?

What is in a wish? Asking for what you really want or asking for what you really need, or something different? What inspires you in making a wish?

Looking at the difference between wanting and needing can be an interesting exercise these days; it seems to me, the question will never go out of fashion as long as human beings will care about the Earth and other people.

Asking for something – good relationships, good health, “the right job”, “the right partner”, fun, a beautiful house, a successful career, children, peace, whatever your heart desires- is on everybody’s mind.

In wanting certain things from life, some old ways of asking may be, for example, to mentally formulate it, to visualize it, work for it, ask for help, or pray for it.

We have individual wishes, secret and open ones, ones filled with guilt, innocent ones, and passionate ones; there are collective wishes of a couple, family, group, community and nation.

I have recently felt that wishes have a powerful relational aspect to them. Perhaps they have always been like that. I want something for me that is “in relation with” something or somebody else.

Have you ever wondered about how you ask for your wishes? What words do you tend to use? Who are they addressed to, even when you do it quietly? What is your state of mind in asking? What is the intention at the root of your wish?

A relational wish-making … with examples

An invitation to have a fresh look at wish-making

It is true that we all need each other in order to exist as people and live a life. And we usually ask for something that is believed to be outside of ourselves, and so it could be that we sometimes place pressure on our-selves or others to get it and have certain expectations of people and things out there.

These questions and reflections are formulated to include both the “wish-maker” and who or what else may be part of the wishful thinking. The questions are addressed to anybody that cares sincerely about inquiring into their own mind.

• Wishing to rebuild life post – lockdown?

Trusting unconditionally in your vision and being prepared to generate new ideas and ideals that will serve as a new foundation for life, or for building on the existing one.

• Asking for a loving family?

Sustaining and contributing to harmonious relationships with and within your family.

• Asking for a good job or fulfilling work?

Carrying out the work with dignity and respect for self and others. Do you know what special gifts and talents you hold inside and which ones can be expanded on?

• Wishing for a successful career?

What is the internal motivation that drives your wish?

• Asking for a beautiful house?

Being ready to take good care of it in a way that fills it and the people living in it with love.

• Asking for better experiences and kinder people around you?

Looking at the challenge of tolerating the less harmonious traits that you encounter in others. May these traits be a mirror to some of your own? Treating oneself and others with more kindness and compassion.

• Asking for better health?

Taking more responsibility for your mind, body and spirit from the inside out and exploring the connection between them.

• Aspiring to be more positive?

What is the smallest gesture of simple positivity that you can think of?

• Asking for freedom from anxiety?

Exploring ways of meeting life with less tendency to have people and situations meet your   needs, wants and expectations. There will always be an element of the unknown in life.

• Wishing for more self-empowerment?

Being willing to pay attention to how you might allow yourself or others to practice disempowerment. What is your relationship with receiving help? Re-visiting the “expert position” that you may place on others.

• Asking to be free of anger?

It is powerfully creative emotion. It depends on what you create with it. Perhaps recognising and letting go of what you think you may be entitled to, and embracing what is given.

• Asking to be healed, physically, mentally or emotionally?

Developing an interest in working through and letting go of some old wounds or unhelpful beliefs.

• Asking for internal or external beauty?

Nurturing the curiosity to investigate how you use your beautiful eyes to look at yourself and others.

• Yearning for more peace of mind?

Willing to let go of control and the need to have life going in a certain way.

• Wishing for more abundance in life?

Perhaps being genuinely content with what you have right now and appreciating it, might be a start.  If not there yet, what would help cultivating more appreciation?

• Wishing for more ease and calm in life?

Observing and letting go of any tendency to hold tight on beliefs, things, relationships, or whatever else that you may be a little too possessive about.

• Do you care about healthy food?

Joining others on the journey of creating healthy food from the seed to the meal on your plate. Appreciating what nature offers locally that can be turned into nutritious food.

• Caring about clean drinking water?

Contributing in any way towards the purification and saving of the planet’s precious water. Remaining aware that everything that you put into and on your body ends up back into the Earth, seas and oceans, and then back into the food chain and on your plate and mine.

• Wishing for less pollution and cleaner breathing air?

How can you lead a life style that pollutes less? Trees are waiting to be planted.

• Wishing for less destruction and devastation on this beautiful planet?

Beginning to identify and let go of anything that is destructive in your own thoughts, behaviour and actions.

• Wishing for a more peaceful world?

How can we all cultivate more peace in our minds and contribute to same in relationships?

The endless river of wishes…. It is not so much about arriving to a fixed end point, it is more about keeping the river flowing. One can never go wrong by including a new perspective in the mind.

Asking for what we really want or need is a mysterious action taken, often unconsciously. When we inquire deeply and with kindness, new discoveries may be made, to help lead the way forward.

“Understanding of the self only arises in relationship, in watching yourself in relationship to people, ideas, and things; to trees, the earth, and the world around you and within you. Relationship is the mirror in which the self is revealed. Without self-knowledge there is no basis for right thought and action.” Jiddu Krishnamurti