I wish I could afford to have dinner at the swankiest restaurant in town. I wish I didn’t have to endure the hour-long commute to the office every morning. I wish my life was easier and not filled with all these stresses, concerns, and problems.
Do any of these statements sound familiar? Do you find yourself engaging in a similar kind of negative self-talk, feeling a little disdain for your current existence and yearning for the greener pastures that are surely on the other side of the seemingly unattainable fence? You’re not alone. It is a natural part of the human condition to want more, to want better, and to want it now. That’s normal.
However, wishing won’t get you anywhere. All wishing will foster is a greater sense of disdain, futility, and further inferiority. What you need to do is to stop wishing and to start doing.
Dreams with a Plan of Action
We all have our dreams in life. We dream of buying a fancy convertible, living in a giant mansion, and leading a stress-free existence, but it is virtually impossible for any of these dreams to materialize without some effort on your part. What your dream needs is a plan of action. Only then can your wish slowly become a reality.
At some point during my university career, I decided that I may be interested in being a writer for a living. I wished that I could pursue this interest and be compensated accordingly for it. Rather than sit around and continue to wish for this to happen, I took action.
Upon graduation, I applied for any position that was remotely related to writing as a career. After many applications, I eventually found myself writing and editing for a Buddhist organization. I’m not exactly a Buddhist and it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it was a start. It was from there that I slowly developed an interest in freelancing and that’s where I find myself today. Today, I write about topics that interest me and while I’m by no means rich, I am being compensated fairly for my work.
Getting Out of the Victim Syndrome
I’d be more successful if only I were born into a wealthier family. I’d be more successful if I wasn’t the youngest in the family. I’d be in better physical shape if I could afford to eat healthier foods on a more consistent basis.
What do all these statements have in common? They place the speaker in the position of the victim. It’s not their fault that they aren’t finding success in the world of the work, because they didn’t get to choose their family. It’s not their fault that they are out of shape, because the finances of the situation simply do not allow for a more health-conscious diet. It’s not their fault, right?
The longer that you assert that you are the victim of the situation, the greater sense of helplessness and lack of control that you will start to feel. If there’s nothing that you can do about it, why even try in the first place? This is not the position that you want to find yourself. Instead, take the proactive position and make your life what you want it to be.
Wishes and Dreams Are Only the Beginning
It’s good to have wishes. It’s good to have dreams. These can help to define the road map that you want to take in life and they can help to define the goals that can guide you along the way. However, these wishes and dreams, without a proper plan and course of action, will remain just that: wishes and dreams.
Complain if you must, but at some point, you have to stop wishing and start doing.
To do anything it has to start as an idea, wish, or a dream. Making a list of these things and whether they are actually something that someone can reach or do is another thing. Until you make a list to quantify these ideas all you have are dreams…
Also, we can’t do everything we wish. We must let some things stay dreams while we make others come true.
We can’t do everything we want? I don’t know. I’m still counting on future me to build a time machine. 😉
But why would you want to do everything that you wanted to do? Not everything is feasible in the scope of our life. Yes I would love to sit next to Lincoln while he wrote the Gettysburg address but it’s what dreams are for.
The scheme of things was made to not have time machines, as much as I’d love them to correct mistakes. They would change how we look at the dreams we have. We would try everything with no regard to others or the consequences because we know we could go back and change them. Just don’t see it as something I want. What I want is to be able to make my decisions and know for better or worse I have made them and have to live with them.
But, the point of time travel wouldn’t necessarily be to go back and fix things–which opens up a whole other discussion–but to see and even live life as it once was, up close and personal. In some cases, you could see what really happened.
Of course, time travel doesn’t necessarily mean travel into the past either. We could go forward and see how things turn out. We could see how the story ends, as it were.
At any rate, I still hold to the opinion that many things are feasible. I’m sure many people in the Wright Brothers’ day thought they’d never see man fly. And, I’m sure many people never expected to see man setting foot on the moon in their lifetime.
But, that also means you have to go do things and not just dream of them, with the possible exception being a time machine where you could encounter a paradox where you see the finished product before you built it and learn to build it by seeing it already done.
Then again, if it’s already built, you could skip building it because you’ve already built it in an alternate reality and you might as well take advantage of your other self’s efforts. Of course, maybe he’s waiting on you to finish the time machine.
Temporal mechanics is a real brain twister. 😉
Oh, how we went off-topic… 😉
Temporal paradoxes have been explored in many SciFi shows, movies and even by real scientist.
I personally like the Janeway effect where she is just too involved and the temporal cops come to destroy Voyager. With Star Trek being my favorite SciFi series, next to the Martian Chronicles, I believe that the temporal timeline has been polluted enough. I think I’ll just hang out in the present and try to make the best decisions I can.
Where were those temporal cops when Spock and Nero went into the past? 😉
The new Star Trek movie starts a new vein in Temporal timelines. If you read my guest post here on btr: Star Trek Movie Review you will see that they changed the rules for the new series of movies and probably for any new series on TV.
I did read your post before, but I’m just not real big on remakes. I’ve seen TOS; I’d enjoy seeing Kirk (Shatner) and Spock (Nimoy) again together, but a reboot with a new cast doesn’t appeal to me at all. I’d rather see something new in the post-Nemesis timeline.
I might watch the movie when it comes on TV, but it’s not something I’m going to pay money for.
You are missing out on the reboot. This was a very good movie that does bring the old into the new. IT appeals to all ages, including the hardcore trekkies because the actors used a lot of the mannerism of the characters as they were developed by Shatner, Kelly, Nimoy, Nichols and the rest.
The reboot just isn’t appealing at all. There were still plenty of stories to be told in the original Trek universe and to abandon all the potential to go back and do what is essentially a remake, clever though it may be, just doesn’t leave me with any interest in it.
I guess we go different ways on the reboot. I do feel that Picard & TNG has life left in it, but the team that was doing it was getting long in the tooth.
There, I agree. I mean, when Enterprise went on the air, what we should have gotten was the build-up to the Earth-Romulan war and the eventual founding of the Federation. Instead, we got a temporal cold war and, then, the Xindi arc.
It might have been better had the reveal been that the Xindi were being manipulated by the Romulans instead of the sphere aliens. They could have still worked in the temporal cold war (which they ended right after the Xindi arc) by having Future Guy be a Romulan trying to manipulate the past for things to go more favorably for the Romulan Star Empire.
Things turned around in the fourth season, when Manny Coto was put in charge, and, I think, they were starting back on the right track, but it was too late at that point. And that was disappointing. Among the highlights of a fifth season would have been having Shran as a regular.
And somehow this post has become a Trekkie convention. 😉
That’s what tangents will do to a blog. 😉
Yes, they definitely went the wrong way with Enterprise. They lost me as a regular somewhere around the Xindi arc. But I wasn’t happy with the Temporal cold war either.
They had so much story to work with that they could have made it into what Star Wars ended up being with Episodes 1,2 & 3. They could have filled in so much and went for a complete 7 seasons.
Michael, don’t you like the conversation? I haven’t had this much fun in a while. I actually have someone that likes to talk with me here.
Getting back on topic, I’ve started writing down my wishes to see what I can turn into actual things to do. 🙂
The Xindi arc was okay. It brought some direction to the show, but I really don’t see why they couldn’t have done the same using the Romulans.
I think they perhaps had the mindset that people were tired of Romulans, especially after Nemesis. But, I think people were just tired of poorly executed Romulan stories. The Romulans were underhanded and scheming villains, so that should have given them plenty to work with, especially for story arcs.
I liked season four, where they did a good job of setting things straight, like bringing Vulcans back around to the way they should have been from the start. Also had good tie-ins with Khan, the differences in Klingons and starting the seeds for the Federation.
Yes, but by Season 4 they had done so much damage to the series that the only thing they could do was set some things straight. They had lost anyone except the hardcore fan. I didn’t even watch every episode until I watched it on reruns recently.
Though I must admit the best evil character I have ever seen in any ST show was the Cardassian interrogator in Chain of Command that tortured Picard. “How many lights Picard and this can all stop.”
He would have made a great Romulan.
David Warner did play a short-lived Klingon but never did play a Romulan.
The best Romulan antagonist was perhaps Mark Lenard in “Balance of Terror.”
I loved that episode. Mark Lenard was great as the Romulan. He was a warrior, but I don’t see him as evil. I see him as honorable or the anti-evil.
Yes, he was a Romulan that abided by a code of honor, something which later Romulans, especially as depicted in TNG, did not ascribe to.
When you look at it, I guess perhaps the Romulans were the honorable ones in TOS and the Klingons were the underhanded ones. With TNG, the Romulans became more devious, while the Klingons were given a deeper backstory where they had a code of honor. No doubt due to Worf being a main character.
I think Worf, Klingon’s in depth & TNG changed the franchise for the better and Enterprise almost killed it.
I think giving the Klingons some depth made them more than just 2-dimensional baddies as they seemed to be throughout most of TOS and in some of the films.
If I remember right, the Klingons were originally supposed to somewhat represent the USSR and the Romulans were representative of the PRC. I suppose, in a way, including Worf in TNG kind of mirrored the ending of the Cold War and the Federation later forming an uneasy relationship with the Romulans tied in with things too.
Yes that was Roddenberry wanting to mimic the current world. He also wanted to break stereotypes like the first interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura.
I have heard that the kiss was originally supposed to be Spock and Uhura, but Shatner insisted it be Kirk.
Don’t know whether that story is true or not.
I’ve heard the same thing, which I wouldn’t put past Shatner.
Well, since Kirk didn’t actually get as many girls as his reputation suggests, maybe Shatner had to fight offscreen for each one he did get. 😉
From the Shatner Roast I watched recently, he wasn’t the most well liked star on the show. He created a great character, but had is ego moments. Spock, McCoy and Scotty were always the best characters.
I liked Spock when I was younger.
I saw DeForest Kelley in an old TV show or movie once. I don’t remember what it was. It was in black and white, so it predated Star Trek. I think he played a doctor, but it wasn’t a western and those are the only listings I’ve found where he played a doctor before Star Trek. I vaguely remember his character by a pool. That’s all I remember though. It’s been years since I’ve seen it.
I sometimes wonder if the Law of Attraction has only made more wishful thinkers in the world, and not as many willful doers? I mean, if I focus intensely on receiving a thousand dollars, and really wish hard for it, so much so that I can almost see it in my hands as though it is out there, waiting for me to open my hands up to receive it, the odds of a thousand dollars suddenly appearing out of nowhere later today are pretty darn slim.
If it happens, though, I’ll be sure to tell you. 🙂
In case anyone was wondering, no, it didn’t happen. 😉
It works the other way. You say it will and it won’t. Now if you wish for it not to happen, the opposite happens. The cavet here is that guilty pleasures like money never work.
Can I just wish for a pot of gold? Technically, it’s not money until I cash it in. 😉