Tag: Danger Will Robinson

Can Wishing Really Make It So?

What if a genie jumped in front of you on the way to the kitchen and offered you one wish?

I think it’s a sure bet you’d stop your search for something chocolate to eat and pay attention.

But here’s the thing, what would you wish for if you only had one wish?

Sure, you believe you’d know immediately, but would you?

Standing there with the opportunity to change everything about your life could you decide what’s most important?

Even if you were confident what wish you’d make, would it actually cover the entire specter of your needs?      

I’m thinking probably not.

It’s easy to say if I had one wish I’d want…

But is it really?

What wish would truly change everything and give you the power to control the things you never wanted to happen? Or the things you do?

Of course, we’d all want to wish our loved ones back into our lives. And yes, it would be wonderful.

Yet wouldn’t it be better had they never left us in the first place? Wouldn’t it have been better to spare everyone the pain and heartbreak that comes with loss?

Sure, but how could you ever accomplish that end?
And what about the choices you made that didn’t pan out the way you thought they would? That weren’t completely thought out, made in haste or had the opposite effect you’d anticipated?

That’s a lot of wishes to cover; mistakes, bad choices and the do overs we aren’t allowed.

So what wish might encompass enough territory to truly make an amazing difference in our life’s path? Is it even possible to land on one?

To waste a wish would be foolish when there is only one to be had? It’s quite the dilemma.

I’ve thought about this a great deal, and yes, I have too much time on my hands. I think I may have solved the problem of what wish may include the greatest amount of good.

Go with me here, please.

I think I’d ask the Genie, who by the way looks and sounds just like Robin Williams, for a chance to fix every bad thing before it happens.

Huh?

That’s right. I’d want to know if any choice I was making, or anybody I knew was making turned out bad before it happened. That way I could change the outcome and prevent bad stuff from happening.

Could you only imagine how different the world would be if we all could stop the horrible things from happening?

Yes, I understand the whole Butterfly Effect thing.

How one small change can cause a massive ripple through time, but isn’t that the point? The consequences of the actions are entirely the point.

So, although the Butterfly Effect may change the outcome, isn’t it the actual outcome that we wish to avoid?

How wonderful would it be to warn the people we love to get their heart checked before it’s too late? Or to get any medical test that would stop them from getting sick. To stay home when going out could be deadly or watch those steps before they fall.

So many things and small choices can lead us down a road of no return, but the wish could stop all that.

It would literally undo the unfortunate results of any act or decision that had resulted in irreparable harm.

However, would anyone heed our warnings? That’s another blog entirely.

To erase the choices that have taken us to a place we’d never wished to enter would be amazing.

It would be a mistake proof existence. No regrets, no beating ourselves up over stupid or foolish options, never losing the ones we love to pain and suffering.

We would know before bad things happened. That way we’d be able to prevent the moves we and others made that negatively impacted our existences.

But there’s the rub. For there already exists a warning bell within us which rings to advise us about mistakes. That little gnawing in the pit of our gut that is saying loud and clear, this isn’t a good idea. Yet too often we ignore this voice or override its alert.

Do we suffer afterward? Yes, but by then it’s too late. But perhaps ignoring the voice is the only choice we actually can make, because the control doesn’t really lie with us.

Of course, I’m assuming that those choices were ours to make and not some universally forged blueprint written in stone.

The belief that fate intervenes to ensure the life chosen for us plays out as planned.

I, as many others, have been privy to moments that practically screamed, “sorry, you need to do this or that and not the other.” Actually, I must say destiny has a pretty big mouth.

The Italians have an expression, “La forza del destino,” the force of destiny.

So if that’s true perhaps knowing the future isn’t really a very good idea. Especially if we can’t change or make it better.

It would probably be more painful to eliminate the element of surprise. We’d have to live knowing that something bad is going to happen we can’t fix.

Isn’t it enough we often feel so helpless and frustrated when faced with unexpected tragedy we wished we could have changed?

I suppose we’d all like to believe we could have “do overs.” That a momentary lapse of judgement ruined an outcome we hoped for. Or ignoring that little voice in the pit of our stomach that’s screaming, “Danger Will Robinson,” was a foolish thing to have done. I imagine the real question is; Can we control destiny through wishing? Or must we merely accept reality and come to terms with our fate?

So many people I know believe you carve out your own life. I suppose to a large extent, this is true. The daily choices we make like vanilla or chocolate, Maj Jong or canasta, drive or walk, belong to us.

But what about the life changing ones like, when we are born, die and whom we marry? What path we follow or do we have what it takes to overcome the great challenges one may face? These may not be ours to choose.

Perhaps it’s a bit of both, or none, I’m not the boss of the universe so I can’t say.

I just know I’d like to believe we have a bit to say about how we live our lives and even what our future will be. But then again, I also believe in Santa Claus, the Ark of the Covenant and the FBI spying on me through my computer camera. So maybe I’m not one to give advice.

Still, I’ll opt to play genie here and wish all your choices work out as you’d want. Maybe just the wishing can help make it happen. One can only hope.

We Got This. Or Do We?

Has anyone has ever noticed a person’s face eating an ice cream cone? Pure bliss and happiness with each lick. Ice cream makes everyone happy, but there is something different about ice cream in a cone.

Whether or not one realizes it, eating an ice cream cone is a study in contradiction. Despite the enormous pleasure a good ice cream cone can bring, and I’ve yet to meet a bad one, it comes with certain challenges.

The greatest of these is to ensure the ice cream doesn’t fall out of the cone. It’s a balancing act of sorts but the prize is well worth the effort.

Even eating an Oreo cookie presents scrutiny. Should you eat both sides at once, break it open and lick the middle or eat both sides separately trying to balance the amount of filling on each half? Yes, I know everything I seem to relate to starts with food.

So how do we make certain our precious scoop or scoops are protected from landing on the curb? Or eat an Oreo?

Okay, here’s the real point I’m making…in every moment of pleasure there is risk. Most of the time we just “got this,” without focusing too much. Choices must be made to ensure the best reward.

Yet why is it that the risks these days seem out of balance with the rewards? Something is off kilter and we are walking sideways.

Even something as simple as licking an ice cream cone must be done with care to ensure against loss. While we’re enjoying our treat, we don’t realize we’re being challenged unless we look down and ice cream is covering our shoe. Yet now we are suddenly aware we are teetering with cones or cookies.

Are we really aware of this delicate balance as we live our lives each day? Often dwelling too long in the mundane tasks that fill up our moments and became a part of who and what we are.

The things we’ve come to depend on for consistency, but truly mean very little to our well-being.

Reading the morning paper, sorting through laundry, making a grocery list no one sticks to anyway or playing Wordle. These aren’t earth shattering events in our day, but they give us a sense of continuity and a certain harmony.

We aren’t aware how much we need these habits until we find our world disrupted. Perhaps this is where the true challenge for human beings takes on a life of its own.

Despite our feelings of security, we are not. Yet this is something we all have learned to tune out, to ignore and lock away. We must or our entire day would be spent in fear and anxiety.

We need to feel whole and in control. The fact that one little shift in gravity would mean the entire world being destroyed doesn’t enter our mind. We won’t allow that to happen because we have set up a perimeter and bad thoughts aren’t allowed inside. The crime tape border of our well-being.

We are so certain the earth will continue on an even keel the fact it could spin out of control is irrelevant because “we got this.”

Yet suddenly we humans are facing a new challenge. One that is not so easy to ignore and is making us a bit antsy. We are a bit off kilter these days and searching for our sense of equilibrium.

Oh we fight that feeling every day and tell ourselves, I’ve got this, but inside we’re feeling off somehow.

Where our usual grasp on life was steady and in double digits it seems to be slipping and something is there deep in the pit of our stomach where foreboding lives.

So how do we handle the fact our steps seem wobbly and not feeling as safe or sure on our feet?

How do we convince ourselves it will all turn out fine, so we can go back to reading our paper and sorting laundry as though it mattered?

We humans don’t do well when faced with danger or life is lopsided. We’re not hyenas galloping through the Serengeti Plains in Africa, unaware we are about to become a dinner entrée for some lion. We’re a higher life form, we have a brain, well most of us anyway. Despite having the brains, sadly we don’t always choose to use them.

It is precisely when intelligence and logic is lacking and absent from our lives that we feel the most off balance. Suddenly nothing makes sense any longer and a weird feeling in our gut registers, “Danger Will Robinson.” So if Robbie the Robot is warning us, what do we do?

Despite all of our best coping mechanisms a strange sensation remains and it’s left to us to discern the solution. We know something is off, we just feel it.

After all this mumbo jumbo have I brought you here to offer no help? No, but I can’t be totally certain it will work.

For perhaps the first time in our lives our fight or flight mechanism is triggered all the time.

Flight is no solution for there is nowhere to run.

Now fight is the only way to get our balance back.

Let’s face it; we’re extremely bothered by the state of our nation and our world. Although we are only one person, in this we share a single goal. To restore order to our lives. To face what is confronting us every day and restore calm and harmony. We know life isn’t right, or the way it should be and we feel it continually.

We need to open ourselves to the reality of our situation and understand what is to be done.

As any psychiatrist will tell you, the first step toward healing is admitting there is a problem.

Facing that fact will help us get our power back.

It will force us to look for answers, seek out others who feel as we do, take the risks we must to restore our equilibrium.

Abraham Lincoln famously said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

We are not fooled by those who would disrupt and corrupt our world. We see them, we know them. How we stop them is the real question. We are only one person against a hostile world. How do we walk straight again? Sure, this time it’s trickier, but in the end it’s imperative that we got this. And we will!

Perhaps while you’re pondering the answer a double scoop ice cream cone might help you think.