Make a Wish
My teammates and I were walking after watching the Sexual Chocolate-vs.-Roaches game at the “Malakas at Maganda” tournament* when a gust of wind sent a shower of little leaves our way. “Catch a falling leaf and make a wish!” I told my friends, as I thrust my hands out and tried to capture one of them little buggers.
“And who told you that?” they asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably the same person who said, ‘Count a hundred yellow cars and the first person you see after that is your soulmate!’”
Actually, what I was told to do was count a hundred yellow cars then look for a person of the opposite sex wearing purple. The person behind that purple-clad male was supposed to be my soulmate. Geez. I can’t believe my friends and I actually fell for this. (On a side note, I got so kilig because the person that met the criteria was my crush at that time. But oh well. I stumbled upon my real soulmate later on, and there were no yellow cars involved.)
We all heard these ridiculous things growing up—it used to be as simple as getting the bigger portion of a wishbone, but some bored people kept coming up with complicated wish-making, soulmate-finding schemes that other people couldn’t help but follow. (The letters “MASH” are part of my hazy memory, though I can’t remember what they stand for.) At some point, a friend got so annoyed with it all that he invented a highly complex “Count the number of Chowking billboards” method.
So what do these elaborate systems tell us, apart from revealing that teenage girls can be incredibly gullible? (Hey, we’ve all been there!) I think they indicate that people are innately optimistic—no matter how cynical the exterior—clinging onto the possibility of having their dreams fulfilled, and keeping hope, precious hope, alive. At the risk of sounding like Ruffa at the Miss World pageant (”Like the Little Prince said…”), Martin Luther King, Jr. did say, “If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.” Whether you choose to catch those leaves or not, or scoff at the idea that yellow cars can point you to your match, keep that fire of hope alive!
Now forward this to seven of your friends and your crush will profess his undying love for you within 48 hours.
*More on this in a succeeding post.
Photo from andrearogers.com