The Eleventh

If I could have anything in the world, anything at all, I would not know what to wish for.  I would fear for upsetting the perfect balance of light and dark in my life, derailing the trajectory of a life that so far has been more good than bad and which seems to me to find a way to even out the rough spots and lead me directly to things I didn’t know I desperately wanted or needed until I got to them.

Wishing is pointless. Wishing is for malcontents, who are people lacking in imagination, irony or vision.  When things are bad, you are on your way to something better.  When things are good, you’re to learn from the journey there and help those who aren’t there yet.  It’s a cycle, it’s a process.

I am sitting at this desk, dizzy with a stomach bug I think came from bad lettuce at lunch.  In the other room, my husband is reading Shel Silverstein to our daughter, and she is flinging gales of laughter through the room like confetti.  It is freezing cold and dark outside, but the lamps in the house make pools of light on the tabletops and the furniture. 

What kind of human being would I be if I spent my time wishing for things to be different?  How can we be so blind to what we have, constantly yearning for something else?

I don’t need to wish for anything in the world.  It’s all right here, right now.