I spend a lot of time these days wishing for crystal balls and magic wands. For a friend who’s just been diagnosed with cancer. For a family who has two children with tumors and is expecting a third whose young body will be broken by open-heart surgery. For a softball team who can hit well and field well – just not in the same game. For young people with broken hearts. For those anxious about the next step. For those whose questions have no easy answers.
Crystal balls would help. To peer just a bit down the road. To see what’s coming. To know what’s just around the bend. Crystal balls could be the new anti-anxiety pill – if you know what’s next, what is there to worry about? If you see yourself as happier, healthier, more whole “just around the bend”, then maybe the curse of today won’t feel so heavy.
On the other hand, crystal balls could cause the next rush on REAL anti-anxiety pills. What if “what’s next” isn’t what you want? What if “what’s coming” is more like a hurricane than healing balm? What if, peering into the ball of tomorrow sends you to a deeper, darker place than the place where you are right now?
That’s where the magic wands come in. Magic “fixers” or “changers” – ways to alter those images. Ways to shape what’s next. Ways to avoid, to jump-over. Even better, ways to play cupid, to create joy, to make dreams come true. Ways to ensure health – to promise peace.
Crystal balls and magic wands. Not play ones, but real ones – ones that work – they don’t exist. And if they did, I don’t really think I’d want one – either one. But when things are hard, when the future’s not clear, when I don’t have answers – then, in those moments, if you could promise me that they would really work, then buy two of each: one for you – one for me. So we can see the future. So we can heal the pain.
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2 comments:
As a mother and friend, I find this simple truth to be very difficult to accept and I don’t claim perfection in its execution but I do believe it best we have no crystal balls or magic wands.
If we could see the painful future, and we could change it - then it wouldn’t be the future any longer. And if you can’t change it, why look? If we look and it is good, we might miss the opportunity of a life lesson in the now that could benefit us the rest of our lives. Better to live in the present with the benefit of the past to draw on.
As an old person, I now see the benefits of not seeing into the future or even of having someone fix it for another. We are each on our own paths…ours alone. We touch and are touched by others but it is ours to walk. To look back at the very darkest moment, we can see that it is the choices we make at that time that is the measure of ourselves. To use the magic wand on someone else’s life would mean judging for others.
We only have the present to offer ourselves, with open arms, to those who wish our support. What is important in the now, is the “knowing” that you are there – no matter what.
How beautifully written, gooselady. At this time we are waiting for a bone scan result. Why does it take a horrendous diagnosis to make us see what is important. We don't know. We don't have a crystal ball and I'm glad. For a few days, we have peace, we have optimism and hope, and the sudden need to be together is overpowering. A week ago, I was griping about him, he was snapping at me, and now, since Thursday afternoon, the gentleness with which we speak to each other, the kindness we show, the generousity we feel, one to the other, is undisturbed by any thoughts of the future - the future that holds we don't know what. We live in the moment, the moment of not knowing and we are happier than we have been in weeks.
writerlady
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