Author Noelle Oxenhandler creatively ‘puts it out there’

Cinderella wisely sings that a dream is a wish your heart makes; Pinocchio’s conscience, Jiminy Cricket, reminds us that when you wish upon a star your dreams come true; and Snow White seems to think that making a wish will lead the one she loves to find her someday. So it may be that Western culture has developed our wishing role models based on hopeful, doe-eyed Disney characters that need not have wished in the first place. After all, they always have a happy ending. But, what if someone non-animated divulged that something you wish for really can come true—that is, if the wisher knows how to execute that wish correctly.

“The Wishing Year,” Noelle Oxenhandler’s new memoir explores the history, mysticism, and magic involved in making wishes. Oxenhandler sets out on a year-long quest, determined to make her three greatest wishes come true: finding a man, buying a house, and healing her soul after a time of personal and spiritual upheaval. Through various practices such as building wish shrines, rubbing a Sacagawea coin on herself, and writing down her wish and sleeping on it (literally), Oxenhandler meanders candidly through her year of wish-making experimentation. When surprising circumstances, seemingly coincidental occurrences, and unbeknownst prosperity begin to flow into her life, she is forced to confront the idea that maybe wishes really can come true. But, as to whether they are the result of the odd wishful antics she employs, no one can truly say.

Oxenhandler, who began as a wish skeptic herself, personifies Nancy Drew in her quest to find a loophole in wish-making. At first she is reluctant to make a personal wish, thinking that surely it could only be ephemeral at best, or that something bad will happen in her life to offset the good the wish-come-true has bestowed. Then she decides that a personal wish is acceptable by the wish gods as long as it is consequential (in case you’re wondering, the wish for a pony as you blow out your birthday candles is a lost cause). She explores that perhaps it’s not mysticism but the wisher’s own heightened focus on the wish that creates a sense of hyper-awareness that causes the wisher to notice opportunities they had not been aware of before. Ancient wishers employed annual festivals, sacrifices and rituals to ensure that their wishes came true, while the modern sentiments of mind-over-matter, prosperity consciousness and the law of attraction offer a vending machine of self-serve wishes—insert one positive thought and a wish come true pops out. However, all of this is not to say that one can make a wish and then kick back and let the wishes roll in. Oxenhandler explores how incessant energy must be placed into controlling the outcome of the wish—a sort of wish insurance so-to-speak.

After her year of experimentation, Oxenhandler is a big proponent of the state of mind known as putting it out there; a practice wherein confessing your wish to yourself and the universe, it will someday, somehow, suddenly appear before you. The author recounts the first time she put it out there:

“I have no idea where I first heard that phrase—in Northern California it just seemed to be in the air. It sounded silly but harmless and cost-free, so what was there to lose? For several months, each morning and evening, I fervently wished for a studio. And I never voiced my wish aloud or spoke of it to anyone. I just thought it, quite intensely, for a few moments each day. And then it happened. One afternoon, on my way home from a meditation retreat, I stopped to get a cup of coffee. Glancing over the local newspaper, I saw these words: ‘Free use of studio in exchange for speaking French.’ Incroyable! I thought to myself. Because my father was a French professor, I had lived in France on and off since childhood.”

Though compelling tidbits of the wishing practices of ancient cultures and juicy tidbits of the author’s personal life are intermittently revealed, Oxenhandler hopscotches between the history and lore of wishing and her past experiences. Occasionally, digressions on magic may also cause a lost sense of what is happening in the story; for example, “Even when our motives are entirely innocent of malice, when we approach the realm of nonlocal mind we must proceed with utmost caution. At least that’s what the modern maestros of wishing say. For again—whether they’re invoking the ancient world of magic or the realm of modern science—to experiment with the power of wishing is to posit a world of fluid boundaries, a world in which thoughts, things, and events do not occur in isolation.” Now, where were we again?

Oxenhandler’s ardent zeal and open heart will seize your curiosity, holding it captive in unadulterated anticipation of seeing her heartfelt wishes become reality. Maybe Disney’s characters got it right after all, and enough wishing really will make your dreams come true.

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