Every Wish Leads Back to Choice

If you were given a magic wand that granted you a wish, any wish, what would you choose?

When I was asked this question, neither my first nor my second answer went beyond the surface level.

The first was to change my master’s, because it’s safe to say my only learning was how to write the perfect academic article. I published and all, but my expectations from the start were far beyond. I didn’t bother to look back and realise that publishing a piece in my field had always been a dream of the little girl inside.

Expectations set a bar at a certain level, and nothing below satisfies. Later in life, this only brings rigid thinking, turning every other achievement into disappointment. One can bring suffering upon themselves through the meanings they attach.I experienced my biggest emotional downfalls every time my “manic high” got too excited too quickly then equally disappointed.

Another uninvited guest welcomed by expectations that we often don’t realise is ingratitude. Turning every other victory into a quiet defeat, leaving us with a lack of appreciation that shows up as questions so dismissive that we end up thinking:

Have I wasted my life?

Imprisoned by recurring intrusive thoughts, we tend to cast aside almost everything that, in truth, has only served us on our journeys to become.

While my initial answer to the magic wand question was about my master’s, my second was about my illness. I thought I’d give up anything to reverse my condition, why not a wish from a magic wand?

Yet somehow, that didn’t feel right either. Eventually, I realised that through all the ruptures my health put me through, I owe it a quiet kind of gratitude, because if it weren’t for Parkinson’s, I would have never become the person I’m proud to be today.

Slowly, I began to realise that a magic wand could not grant me what’s lacking in my life, because worth comes with effort. Even the things we wholeheartedly desire would be taken for granted if they were simply handed to us, as no part of us had to strive for them to become.

In the end, my wish appeared as something that wasn’t even remotely close to any of my thoughts. I wished for my parents to live as long as I did, for all of us to depart on the very same day, knowing that no matter my efforts, mortality would never grant such mercy.

I now know I can make any of my wishes come true because I was born with a blessing that holds the power to turn them into reality, and so were you: the simple, sacred act of choosing.

When we are children our imagination allows us to create worlds when this one doesn’t have much to offer. Dreams unbound by reality, limitless as the universe until they collide with the real world, often turn into fragments, and somewhere along the way we lose the creative spark that once connected us to our inner child.

We get lost in forgetting who we once were and who we dreamed to be, and eventually the worst kind of torment begins, slowly turning us into who the world wants us to be. The real tragedy begins when we start believing what’s imposed on us is who we want to be.

Lately, I’ve been waking up with a burden pressing against my chest, making it hard to face the morning. Beneath empty skies of unfinished outcomes, where each confident step leads not to lessons but to walls that feel like endings, I reach for my phone each day, only to be met with the same quiet disappointment. An inbox, void of interview invitations, despite all the job applications.

Up until yesterday, I was blindly following a path that had been set out for me which I didn’t stop to question if who I am today wanted to live that way.

Lost in a sense of purposelessness, a sudden shift made me realise that alongside my passion for psychology, something deeper calls to my soul-level desires, pointing toward the path I want to pursue in life: writing.

When the choice feels right, we rarely feel indecisive about taking the first step. I only gave it a couple of hours to think, and when the clock hit midnight, my application was already sent to the admissions office at Goldsmiths for an MA in Creative and Life Writing.

This experience brought forth a far deeper learning: wishes only come alive for those who make them come true.

As it can easily become second nature for humans to drift away in purposelessness, all it takes is a moment of realisation where we stop and ask the right questions.

Don’t be afraid to interrogate whether your current self feels congruent. Exposing that gap out in the open would be far less destructive now than in the future.

Neither age nor status matters. If desire and passion still burn within you, carry their heartbeat forward.

One small step, and you’re already halfway there.

Thanks for reading! Share this and let others know where the real magic lies.