Make A Wish...

When I saw pollen floating down from the sky today outside the window in this ethereal way like tiny feathers, I couldn’t help but think of wishes. And then I remembered the scene I recently watched in the Michael Fassbender version of Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth, played by Marion Cotillard, is sitting to perform her “madness” scene, and at first, I thought it a little dull, except that she is magnificent. Her facial expressions, alone, tell everything.

But the floating dust, the pollen, those feather-like things we often think of when blowing a dandelion not yet mature to make a wish, said something in this scene. It wasn’t a distraction as one might think at first, but an enhancement. And I think it led to the symbolism of the moment, the symbolism of how we lead our lives. Maybe I’m thinking too deeply about it. Maybe it was purely accidental, and the director marveled: "Oh wow. How fortunate." Maybe they did it on purpose to create a dream-like sequence, a sort of ghostly allusion, specters in the air, omens. Maybe they, themselves, didn’t even notice.

It might make sense if you really stop to think about it. We make wishes. We certainly did as children, running freely, playing in fields, picking up the flowers and blowing them into the wind as we wished for silly things like later bedtimes or ice cream cones or beach days and sunny days or to be kissed for the first time. But wishes are what we make them, aren’t they? And sometimes, perhaps, what we wish for can become a regret. “Be careful what you wish for.” It certainly became that way for Lady Macbeth. Oftentimes, when we wish, it’s because we WANT something. We want fame or love or more money or…just plain--more. The adage less is more seems appropriate in this light. It seems the moment our wishes come true, we begin to think of the next wish, a bigger wish, a better wish, a wish that gets us what we want all over again. When we get it, sometimes these wishes can come at big costs. Can you think of a time this was so in your life? I wish I had—or I wish to be—or I wish he would—But at what cost? Are we not living but instead wishing away moments?

Perhaps the wish should be just this. Just now. To just live in the right-now moments we are almost always missing, wishing, wishing away, because we’re not recognizing any present moments fully. Maybe the flowers truly know more than us. By blowing them away and wishing, we are spreading their seeds all around, some would even say to make more weeds, rather than letting them be what they could be by staying. Still. In their moment to blossom naturally. Just as we will, in our due time. We have much we can learn from nature. Let’s be still. And listen.