Big

Tom Hanks has an adventure as a boy become a man overnight due to a single wish made at a carnival.

As we sat here watching the movie for the hundreth time tonight the thought crossed my mind: "Just what would I do if a wish was granted overnight for me?"

What would I wish for and why? How would that wish ripple out and affect the lives of everyone else in my life?

In the movie, Josh only wants to be bigger than he is at that one moment so he can ride a carnival ride with a pretty girl.

But what happens is SO much 'bigger' than he anticipated and so much more complicated than everyone else would ever comprehend.

So, if I were granted a wish from the Zoltan machine, what would it be?

Would I wish to be thin again with the body that I now only see in decades old photographs?

Would I wish to be in college and 'do it right' this time?

Or would I wish for something for someone else?

Could it be possible to make life better for someone else or would that wish make things worse for another?

Oh, the power of a wish!

We teach kids to 'blow out the candles and make a wish' on their birthdays and swear them to silence telling them that if they share their secret wish that it won't come true.

We see a shooting star and wish for things in the silence of our heart.

As night falls, the first star to peek out of the velvet darkness is known as the wishing star and desires are uttered as if that heavenly body can truly govern who or what we are in life.

We make wishes on eyelashes, over candles and sometimes over drinks.

We have foundations set up to take money and grant wishes to people who are dying as if somehow the wish will make up for the passing of life that will soon come.

How does one wish suddenly become so big?

Maybe it is just the idea that we can, with the simple desire to change something, become more than we are all on our own.

It's almost a genetic belief that if we want something enough, we can wish for it to be so and it will come to pass.

I'd like to return to the days where the power of a wish trumped all semblance of reality.

It made the time pass by in heady excitement with the dreams of what might be.

Maybe that faint remembrance is why we enter sweepstakes and contests. We are still captivated by the power of a wish.

The excitement of what could happen overshadows the bigger picture of our daily reality that is just too dull to contemplate. But, with a wish, we can be more than we are right now.

Wishes can make us bigger, stronger, faster, prettier, more able and somehow make up for the difference between who we want to be and who we really are when we see our own flawed face in the mirror each morning.

I'd like another wish. . . I just don't know whether I am ready for it to become true.

But I think I'm ready to give it a try.