Why do we wish?

Think of a wish you made once in your life during Christmas and you might just probably doze off with such a long list. Big or small, corporeal or intangible, plain simple or ambitious, whatever the reason might be, almost everybody I guess takes the time to close their eyes, cast that wish into the heavens in the hope that one minute, day, month or year, the universe will conspire to make that wish come true.

Of course, that’s a very theoretical way of saying how a wish is made, and others might have their own personal, and maybe more artsy versions of doing it every Christmas. But going back to the question, why do people wish? I’m quite interested in raising this, not only because wishing season is about to peak, but more importantly, I suppose with high degree of confidence that a lot of these wishes don’t actually come true. Or do they?

In fact, wishing is not monopolized by Christmas alone. Why do we toss three coins in the fountain, for instance? Or wish upon a star? Or wish on the candles on a birthday cake? Certainly for one, it’s to represent a dream for something someone one can not readily accomplish at the moment. But is that just all about wishing? You throw the coins and that’s it?

To be sure, I’m not an anti-wishing campaigner. Matter of fact, I have my own wish list for this Christmas. But all we want to know here is why despite ill-fates and tragedies left and right, people seem not to mind wishing still when these ill-fates and tragedies defeat the very purpose of wishing itself, which is for good luck and serendipity. Why irrespective of their dreams’ actualizations, people seem not exhausted about keeping to dream and to wish.

Perhaps, there must be great power in a wish that keeps most of us clinging to that little piece of hope that somehow, someday things will turn out the way we expected them to be. Perhaps, a wish is an enormous sound wave that breaks into the territories of the unknown, into the realm of the supernatural that invites it to intrude into the forces of nature in such a way that the resulting occurrence pleases the wisher.

Or simply, since a wish is primarily tied to a certain desire or yearning, then it’s also connected to the heart and the emotion. This connection to our emotion probably drives most of us to keep believing in these wishes, regardless of ill-fates and tragedies, until they will in one day finally materialize. And I’m sure that this is something we all Filipinos are very good at—rising back each time a colossal obstacle, whatever the nature is—tests our inner grounds and faiths, until we shine back to the best persons we really are.

For our brothers in Mindanao who might have lost their zest to wish, we feel for them. The extent of devastation that Typhoon Pablo left at their doorsteps and farmlands was totally unprecedented. Plus, more than a thousand lives were waged. In Connecticut, USA, the families of those left by the victims of Newtown massacre don’t know if it would be a merry one this year, knowing that this was not the kind of present they wished for Christmas. Here in Cebu, three lives will never have the chance to wish and realize those wishes after dying in a road accident seven days before Christmas.

But these tragedies won’t obviously keep us from wishing still. In fact, all these tragedies give us enough reasons to wish more. For after all, when we ask for our desires and wishes, it’s our responsibility to ask only for our highest good and for the highest good of all concerned. And that’s the beauty of wishing. That’s why we continue and should continue to wish.

Merry Christmas, readers!