A common belief has it, that if you are able to quickly utter a wish while seeing a shooting star, your wish may eventually come true. However, you’ve got to be very quick about it: uttering a wish before or after the fact won’t work: the dying meteor has to be visible while you speak out your dearest hope.
Why is that so? Nobody knows! It’s a mystery. My personal belief is that if you can express a wish on such a short-term notice, often shorter than the blink of an eye, your wish must be very strong and deeply woven into your soul. A wish so strong that you’ll do everything in your power to make it come true, even if it is way beyond the capacity of mortal men. Consciously, and unconsciously, you’ll try, and try, and try… to live your dream, and if you can dream it, you can make it happen, right? A nursed wish is often a fulfilled wish. It may take some time to happen: years, decades, a whole life, but what is time, compared to Eternity?
Do I have such an overwhelmingly soul-tearing wish? I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. So, like every year, when the Earth crosses the Perseids‘ path, I get out in the dark, hoping to see the impressive meteor shower, and to catch one meteor long enough to utter my deepest wish. This year, I wasn’t lucky: the sky was cloudy many nights in a row, and it even rained a bit. And the nights when the sky was clear, it was also clear of meteors, at least during the many hours I’ve spent out there, staring in vain at the black sky, hoping, hoping, hoping… All in all, a fiasco, like so many before. “Well, better luck next year,” that’s all I can say.
Actually, I know that I’m cheating: the idea is not to go out on a meteor shower when the probability of seeing a shooting star is at its all times high; the idea is to tell your wish when you’re utterly unprepared to see such a rare event as a meteor disintegrating in our atmosphere.
Maybe I should stop cheating the stars, and while at I’m at it, I should stop cheating myself. After all, it’s silly. In the real world, wishes like mine don’t come true. They just keep us hoping and dreaming. Dreaming of a removed world of happiness, far beyond our reach. Or, as Oscar Wilde grimly put it:
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
I’ll keep looking at the stars. Cold they twinkle, and that’s where my soul longs to be: away from this lowly and meaningless place of hurt and loneliness, away from this empty desolate desert, where haunting wishes never die, because they are bigger than life.