UPON A STAR

July 24, 2025
Drew
Thought
0 Comments

“I wish…” These words can start something.

We’ve got to be mindful because, if we don’t watch out, what these words can start is a sense of woulda-coulda-shoulda. They can start us regretting, which is mostly a dis-empowering relationship to life.

There’s not much juice in regret. Not much hope or possibility. Not in holding on to it, anyway. I mean, definitely it’s sometimes important to express regret in order to get ourselves back on track — to realign and come clean, to clear things up for ourselves and others, and to make room for forgiveness and a fresh opening. That’s all awesome. But to linger in it is dreary and miserable.

Wishing that things had been different, when they weren’t… Or wishing things were different right now, when they aren’t… Or wishing things could be different going forward, when what we’re really saying is that we don’t think they can be… Wishing for unreality like this gives wishing a bad name.

One of my mother’s favorite sayings was, “If wishes were horses, we’d all have a ride.” She was a practical person, given little to idle druthers. Rather than hollow wishes for what isn’t, she’d advise that we get down to the business of dealing with what is: accept this as our starting point, and either work with it as we can, or change it as we must.

In Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote, “You’re wishing too much, baby. You’ve got to stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.” Mom would’ve liked that.

But even with such a no-nonsense sensibility, it’s important to remember that “I wish” can also be the very genesis of creation. “I wish” can be the first breath of possibility, the beginning of hope. And if hope is nurtured, it can sprout into expectancy. And expectancy can — if we let it — give not to unreality, but in fact to a new reality.

I think it’s often a matter of what we’re wishing upon and whether or not we really believe in it.

Leigh Harline and Ned Washington wrote “When You Wish Upon a Star” for Disney’s Pinocchio.

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you.

If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do

Fate is kind
She brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of their secret longing

Like a bolt out of the blue
Fate steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true.

It’s beautiful. It brings a tear to my eye. But for most of my life, I think, I’ve heard it as magical thinking. Sweet, but sort of silly. Certainly not a solid life-hack. Pinocchio is a fairy tale, after all. And this song is sung by a cricket, for Pete’s sake. Wishing seems like the antithesis of practicality.

UNLESS — the star upon which we wish is ourselves.

UNLESS — the Fate into which we put our deepest desires is something like dharma — our awareness of belonging and purpose in our lives.

Wishing, then, becomes more like truth-telling. Telling the Universe and God and Everyone who we are, who we declare ourselves to be.