Author: Elizabeth Cutler
After a 21 Choices run a few nights ago, two friends and I strolled around Old Town Pasadena while contemplating the attributes of Circus Animal Cookie flavored versus those of Root Beer Float flavored ice creams. We happened upon the wishing trees, a smattering of potted trees in the courtyard area by Johnny Rockets. Like the wishing trees that Yoko Ono started in Washington, D.C. last year, people adorn these trees with wishes scribbled on slips of paper found on tables with golf pencils for writing.
It’s a simple idea, even a rudimentary one. Let’s all write down what we want most in the world, hang it on a tree for others to read if they choose to, and then continue about our daily lives. When I first saw the small sea of paper-petaled trees in the same Pasadena I’ve frequented since my first year at Oxy, I was relatively blasé, but then I began to read the wishes.
People wish for peace, love, harmony and all that usual good stuff. And then people wish for things like a speedy recovery for a loved one with cancer, for the end of hate crimes and that neighbors would respect one another no matter what. The newly announced Obama-Biden ticket found itself onto several swatches of paper as well. Wishes for high scores on a nursing school exam, for a boy to notice her back, to get a job soon and to not feel awkward around girls anymore pepper the hopeful branches.
My personal favorite block-lettered note said: “I WISH MY HUSBAND WOULD GET HIS VASECTOMY REVERSED,” but that’s just me. What struck me most, however, was the sheer number of wishes on those branches. Glass half-full or half-empty notwithstanding, in this day and age, I firmly believe that the power to hope defines humanity. It’s a scary world out there, what with suicide bombers and natural disasters headlining the daily news. That scariness is not limited to faraway places or locations that we can pretend are not our own; the fatal car crash on Colorado Boulevard last week certainly sobered me up to the realities of the risks we run every day. The ambulances that many of us saw arrive at Sycamore Glen two weeks ago are just a few of many reminders that our actions have consequences; and those consequences shape our lives and the lives of everyone around us.
So what is the consequence of a simple wish hung on a tree in Pasadena? The consequence should be action. A wish should not end with a period; rather, it should end with a choice, a decision and the impetus to act.
One of the wishes on a tree said: “I wish a hot chick would call me” and ended with a phone number. Seized with what can only be characterized as extreme curiosity or perhaps temporary insanity, I gave the number a call to ask the guy what compelled him to leave such a pleading message. He said that he was 27, single and unemployed and just thought, “it couldn’t hurt” to put his wish out there for the world to see.
I’ll be honest, I make a wish pretty much every time I notice that it’s 11:11, see the night’s first star or blow out the candles on my birthday cake. Wishes are our way of expressing that which we are afraid to say as fact—it’s easier and less committal to say “I wish that xyz” than it is to say “This is what I want.”
We need to push ourselves past the point of wishes and train ourselves to make those wishes come true for ourselves. Reality does not come with the fairy godmothers that we grew up watching make wishes come true in Disney movies. We are our own fairy godmothers, for ourselves and for those around us. As we embark on the 2008-2009 academic year—and for about 450 of us the last year of our undergraduate career—I urge you to consider your wishes and think about how you can strive to make them a reality. Whether it’s a personal wish or a wish for the Oxy community, Los Angeles, the United States or the world, there’s always something you can do to inch closer to making that wish come true.
I write this having been away from campus last semester while I studied abroad in Valparaíso, Chile. One of the things that made my experience enriching was the fact that I had to take responsibility for every aspect of my life there; it was up to me to engage with my host family and seek out things to do and people to meet. For the first time, I truly felt like the architect of my own life. It’s a slightly terrifying and somewhat dizzying revelation to have, but I return to Occidental feeling far more empowered and capable than I ever have before.
I do not believe, however, that you have to go away or do anything dramatically different in order to obtain this feeling. Take stock of your life and surroundings as they are and think about what you can do to make them better. That can mean anything from volunteering for your candidate of choice to coordinating a fundraiser for any number of philanthropic organizations. It can mean smiling at strangers or turning a deaf ear to gossip. It can me
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