I’ve heard this expression, and thought about it last night, while making wishes on the last full moon of the year…I know what the old-fashioned Scottish nursery rhyme means, “If Wishes Were Horses then Poor Men Would Ride,” it means you get nowhere and nothing by wishing for anything, but there I was last night, looking out my window at that radiant round moon, making wishes…There are things and moments about the past year I want to remember for the rest of my days on this earth and there are things and moments about the past year that I dearly want to forget.  There are things I desperately want to change in the coming new year and things that I want very much to remain the same.

I made only two wishes for myself last night…the rest were for those I love and a few for people I don’t even know.  It feels somehow ‘pure’ to me, to wish, the act of making a wish…juvenile and immature some might call it; wishing on stars, full moons, fallen eyelashes, itchy palms, head-side-up pennies, throwing salt over my left shoulder, smudging with sage…all those old-fashioned superstitions some call “silly” but are part of who I am, or who I think I am…it’s like an innocence in some way…a belief that I’ve been good enough, kind enough, generous enough, loving enough…that good things I wish for and hope for will happen…

A friend of mine shared an article with me recently about ’20 things to let go of’ as we head into a new year & most of them are what I call the ‘obvious’ ones; worry and stress and anger for example, which seem pointless to me because I think we either are worry-warts with anxiety and rage, or we aren’t, and it’s hard to “let go” of something that is so firmly established in our character, but some of the ones I really liked, and that I believe are doable,  were to ‘stop thinking that you need to do more and be more than what you are, stop focusing on your money woes and focus on your abundance, stop thinking that you are damaged because you are not where you want to be in your life, stop dwelling on what you regret, stop being afraid of the uncertainty of your future’ and I liked thinking last night that I can probably manage all of these 20 things with practice and patience, to make my next year better, knowing it won’t happen overnight, but it could happen over 365 nights…

I watched a story on the news yesterday evening about a line of people in California waiting to buy lottery tickets for one of the biggest jackpots in history that stretched all the way to the Nevada boarder…those people were making wishes no? …and don’t get me wrong, I know people win, but I also know the odds of winning are really, really slim…it seemed to me, very late last night, looking out at the dark shadowy sky, looking up at the gorgeous glowing moon, that my wishes on the last full moon of the year were perhaps just as likely to come true as the wishes of others for six numbers all in a row…