Wishes and Thoughts

Most of us have the experience of wishing for things in our lives.

Could be a perfect house, an amazing partner, a bucket list holiday, a financial windfall, an unlikely health recovery... our lists of wishes tend to be long. Maybe we just wish we were happy more often.

The beautiful thing about wishes is that they are often unbound by the restrictions and limitations of ostensible reality, yet they offer us insight into our hearts' desires.

Then there are our thoughts.

Our thoughts tend to be informed by our past experiences as well as our sense of what we think we "know" about reality. Maybe they are more rational and logical, I'm not entirely sure about that, though...

Much of the time, our thoughts can end up becoming fearful, sad... limiting.

So we encounter the sometimes heartbreaking intersection in our lives where our wishes crash headlong into our thoughts.

We wish we had that amazing job coordinating events for our favorite charity, but our thoughts point out that the position is already taken by someone with far more experience and qualifications than we have.

We wish that a person from work we have gotten to know really well and with whom we have stunning connection and rapport were our love partner, but our thoughts inform us that they have been happily married to someone else for a decade.

Maybe those aren't particularly stellar examples, but hopefully you get the general gist.

Our thoughts don't exactly tell us that our wishes are a waste of time, but they definitely can have a dampening effect... at least for most people.

Not to suggest that our thoughts are the "villains" here... sometimes they effectively point out the painfully obvious: "you might well WISH that you would win the lottery, but that isn't going to HAPPEN until you start buying lottery tickets, 'kay?"

Besides, it is our thoughts that — after having tossed a metaphorical bucket of cold water on one of our wishes — ultimately help us find ways to connect the dots that guide us towards our wishes... even if in somewhat "diluted" form.

You know, they keep us from merely jumping off a random tall cliff because we waish we could fly, and guide us towards taking skydiving lessons!

So what's my point here?

My point is that balance matters.

Along the road of life, I seem to have met far more people who are either hopeless dreamers eternally wishing for amazing things and inevitably ending up with disappointment, or people who are so stuck in the thoughts of what can be "real" that all the joy has been sucked out of their lives.

I have spent much of my life as an idealist and dreamer, while remaining very much a realist, mostly by necessity. The eternal challenge had been balancing what I might wish for with the reality of what I can actually have.

To be honest, sometimes it makes me sad... and then I have to remind myself to be grateful for the many small good things that happen, every day!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful weekend!

How about YOU? Are you more of a dreamer, or a realist? Do you feel that your wishes and thoughts are in balance? Or is one overwhelming the other? And how does that feel? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2025.12.11 00:18 PST
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