It is Sunday, and my wish for some sun has been granted sparingly, like how a genie grants a wish in the most twisted sense, almost as if the ability to wish was a trick in itself. But I am aware of the many pitfalls of hope and wishful thinking. People learn these things early. No school is necessary, and no rubric or pedagogy is required for optimum learning. All people, at some point or the other, learn that to wish is to gamble. It is the most dangerous gamble of all—you put your life, and not just your life, but the life to come, the future at stake. Yet, we wish for things, big and small. I wished for love not long ago; today, I wished for sunshine. Banal as the latter was, it has not been granted. Sure, there is light around. We are not submerged in eternal darkness as this passage would have you believe, but there is no warmth in the light upon us. “You asked for sun, and here it is,” the genie would say, “you did not specify you wanted warmth.” And he would be right. All the fables warn us about it. I have been a fool for not choosing my words carefully.
Oh, for all the regrets I have about this to mull over. If I had a nickel, oh well, I would not be sitting here renting this apartment, that is for sure. It is the semantics that betray us, writers most of all. We say things, and then, we regret them not because we were wrong but because between all that is written (or said) and all that is read (or heard) is the valley of interpretation. It burgeons with the lush patches of misunderstanding. They grow in all shapes and sizes and, often, are alluringly beautiful. Like bees filled with the buzz of innocence, we wander to them, and there we learn, like bees often do, that of all flowers in the world, the most colourful are usually traps.
Ah, my metaphor seems to have wandered like a wayward bee who never returns to the hive. It is perhaps a hint that I have already said what I could say today. And yet, it also reminds me of all the conversations that did not go right, and there it is, the reason I woke up with the craving for warmth.
But then, you cannot merely wish for things—I will now go to the kitchen and make some coffee—you must make them happen.