I wish...

Ever since I saw The Godfather trilogy I wished and hoped I would one day marry an Italian. All those darks suits, and slick hair, and romance, and revenge, and passion, and pathos... How could a young girl resist?

Well, on the 20th of September five years ago, on a warm Las Vegas night I got my wish. And come to think of it, more than one wish came true that day. Since I was a little girl, and long before Michael Corleone came into my life, I always said that I would marry when I was twenty-six to a man two years older than me. And guess what... I did.

Hey, and come to think of it, another wish I had as a little girl was to go overseas before I was twenty. I felt as though if I didn't do it then it would never happen. (Hey, come on, I was a melodramatic teenager, give me a break!) Being a poorly university student my dream was looking less and less likely as that milestone approached. As the fates turned out, as well as being a lowly nineteen-year-old university student, I was working as a cheerleader for the Brisbane Broncos rugby league team. Early in the year I was to turn - gulp! - twenty, we were offered the chance to take a two week trip to California to attend a cheerleading camp with some sightseeing thrown in along the way. And whammy, I was overseas. And I arrived home with six days remaining before my twentieth birthday.

My recent wedding anniversary has brought of all these little oddities in my life to light, these dreams come true. They've had me thinking: does this positive reinforcement thing really have some merit? “If we wish hard enough”, and all that, can our dreams really come true?

Just before I married, for the first time in my life I saw a psychic. I loved her, as she only had nice things to say. Some eerie, how on earth could she possibly know that things, to make me think that perhaps she knew what she was talking about, but some nice things all the same.

In that session she told me that I had a secret desire for a career that nobody knew I was harbouring. She said I was secretly working at that career as we spoke. And she was right. I had been furiously writing away at my first novel, without telling a soul bar my husband who I could scarce keep it from considering the desk with my laptop upon it lived in the kitchen at the time. Score one for the psychic.

The psychic also told me that I would succeed with my secret career wish, which was news to me as at the time I was never actually sure that a) what I was writing made any sense whatsoever, and b) that I would have the guts to let another living soul tell me if it did. But within a couple of years I had finished my book, I had sent it into the Richmond offices of Mills and Boon and I had sold it. Score two to the psychic!

But I wonder, and have wondered time and again, if I sold that book, if my secret career wish came true simply because I believed it would. If the psychic hadn’t have given me that extra boost of confidence would I have ever sold my book? Hmmm?

How much does positive reinforcement, believing in oneself, sending out happy vibes into the universe really work? And does it work all the time, or only for the important wishes? The ones which will mean the most to you in the long run, not the ones where you wish time and again that you had bigger boobs, or a smaller nose, or that you could cook your favourite chocolate cake without always burning the very middle.

What do you wish for when you blow out the candles on your birthday cakes? Or when you make a wish on a Santa Claus flower, blowing it back into the wind with the weight of your dreams hopefully not weighing it down? Is it the same thing every time? Or do your deepest wishes and dreams remain the same? Do you use those sparse wishes for good? For spoils? For riches? For revenge? Or for someone else’s happiness?

How about I give it a go right now. I want to win a million dollars. Or maybe no. Maybe I want my husband to win a million dollars. See I am being altruistic, in a way, so that ought to give me a better chance. And I will think such thoughts every night before I go to sleep and see how I go...or how he goes. Or does the very fact of my thinking about thinking about something jinx it? If I know I am reinforcing such things positively, will that make them not happen just to spite me? Either way, I believe it is time for us to find out the real answer to the big question: if we wish hard enough, can we make anything happen?

So watch this space for news of my hubby’s big win. Or not. (And if anyone wishes to send me a lotto ticket to help positively boost our chances, feel free!)

Now, I forgot to mention another lovely occurence in my life. My sister-in-law had a beautiful baby boy in June. He is gorgeous, feisty, and can practically walk and talk already. The kid is a verifiable genius. And to top it all off, my husband and I became his very proud god-parents.

So, now I am not only married to an Italian, but an Italian Godfather. Okay, who needs a million dollars? My life is now complete!

ally@allyblake.com