Before We Close Our Eyes to Manifest This Christmas, Let Us Consider This

Mindfulness myth #9: manifesting

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This is a story of wishes come true – or almost. I’m telling it today, because ‘tis the season of our little, private miracles again, rekindling the hope that someone out there in the universe is listening to our secret longings.

It wasn’t Christmas, but my birthday. Birthdays are the next thing to Christmas when it comes to hope.

I’d just been through a terribly painful break-up; in fact, I was still wallowing in it. My whole inner world had been shaken and I walked like a zombie on the frozen streets, instead of taking public transport, hoping that physical exertion might numb out my pain. The other person was half a planet away, in South America.

That day, I headed to the office. From the underground, I took the longer way, which went round the market that was still famous for its florists (I think the market no longer exists now). I didn’t want the bustle, the narrow pavements, and the smells. I guess I also didn’t want to see flowers: they reminded me that a birthday is to be celebrated.

Walking down the street behind the market, at a corner I passed by a florist that probably didn’t have a stall in the market, and was selling her flowers on the pavement. I kept my eyes down, uninterested, but a bunch of yellow roses mixed with violet irises flashed before my eyes. It was the warm mix of colours, the round shape of the roses balanced by the delicate swords of the irises – I craved for it. It had a beauty that was deliberate, but not artificial. Unlike many bouquets, which encumber and eclipse the person carrying them, this was made to be held in a hand, carried around casually, for the joy of it, like a thing of beauty. I craved to hold it in my hand and walk away with it into the rest of my life.

I got to the office and sank myself in the chatter with my colleagues, and in the busyness of phone calls, emails and visitors. Around lunchtime, the door opened and the office manager running the afternoon shift came in, slightly out of breath, as always, after climbing the stairs to the second floor of the university building where we were located.

She pushed the door shut with an elbow, with a long sigh. We had a moment’s eye contact, smiling hi to each other, and then it hit me. In her other hand, she was holding a small bunch of yellow roses with violet irises. I froze. That was my bouquet.

She noticed my gaze and smiled. She dropped her bag on the chair and kept moving across the room. “This is for you, Zoe, happy birthday from all of us!”

I bent backwards with the blow. No! How can that be? Where did you get it? That woman at the corner, just behind the market? Why did you take that street? Why this, of all others?

I might have cried, but I think I didn’t. I was thankful, yes; as if the universe had winked at me about something only the two us knew, and pressed those flowers into my hands, saying, take them, girl, take this love, if the other’s being denied.

I went home that afternoon with the little bouquet in my right hand. Almost like a bride, or at least like someone who had been celebrated.

Later that evening, the phone rang and my heart jumped. It would be around noon now in Colombia. He could be thinking of me now and calling before my birthday’s over, on my side of the world. That would mean he actually remembers my birthday! A swarm of butterflies stir in my guts.

I rush to the phone.

The display shows an international number.

The country code is +58.

Colombia’s is +57. But never mind. I don’t know anyone else in South America. There’s something wrong with the display. He actually remembered!

I pick up the phone and with a shrill voice I say, hello?

Zoe! Happy birthday, my dear one!

It’s an old school friend. We haven’t talked in years. Where is he? Venezuela. What’s he doing there? Work. Maintenance for an engine. And from Venezuela, you’re calling me, after all these years?

I missed you, girl. How’s life?

Yes, how’s life. I wish I knew.

I hang up ten minutes later.

Somebody did remember. Somebody I wasn’t counting on to remember. Somebody who cares about me, and who I care about. Calling out from South America.

Just not Colombia. Just not – that person. Only a digit away.

My thankfulness had a bitter lining. Maybe the other way round, my bitterness had a thankful shadow. If I’d been gifted this, why not the real thing, and if the real thing was out of reach, why this? To goad me? To say gotcha silly girl?

Those wishes come true that weird birthday: did I manifest them?

From the distance given by time, I now think the universe engaged with me. It responded, its own way. I could have read the messages without bitterness, and recognised the love and the warning that might have been packed within: there’s love out here for you, Zoe, but not where you are searching.

Small wishes are sometimes granted, in what seems to us like small miracles of synchronicity, as if the universe is talking to us, saying:

I know you’ve wished that, here, have it, and cheer up, little human! I’m here, hearing your longings.

But then, why not the big wishes? Why not grant us the object of our quest? If you hear our longings, why aren’t you responding to that longing that my heart is yelling out into the void?

Manifesting – the myth that, if you want something with your whole heart, the universe will give it to you.

Oh, no.

Our quest might go against somebody else’s wishes: my person in Colombia.

Or it might not be compatible with our true nature: that was not the story for me.

Or it could be we are longing for something, but we sabotage it backstage without our knowing.

Or finally, it might not be a quest, but an obsession. Push too hard and that universe might well say ouch, mind my toes, please!

I don’t think we manifest, in the sense of conjuring something up.

Instead, we can allow things to come to us. Give the universe the space to talk to us, to respond, to engage.