Reforming desires with a giant wishlist

It’s about time I shared one of my prayerful tricks for getting my desires reformed en douceur… It involves no trauma, and it is quite a pleasant process, although I still procrastinate on it because by the end of it, the fantasy of owning three villas in the south of France will have vanished in the sun and have been replaced by a deep commitment to something else. And I kind of like entertaining my vain little fantasies, they feel delightfully normal, not like his crazy stuff from hell.

So anyway, the method consists of writing a huge wishlist, of all my wishes as they stand. They don’t have to be PC (it fact it won’t work if they are); they can be outrageously contrary to Christ’s precepts, i.e. three villas in France, a life spent on Tahiti drinking pina coladas, you get the picture.

This is very funny to do, and it gets your juices flowing in five minutes: the full truth is more invigorating than anything I know. When my best friend and I are in a lousy mood, it’s wishlist time: we love coming up with lots of things we would like, very big and very small, in no particular order. And these are ridiculously materialistic for the most part, you bet! Still, in two minutes, we’re like exited toddlers, giggling with enthusiasm.

Of course, the catch is that quite a lot of the things I desire are incompatible : I'm never going to own those three villas. And that's why I dread the process just before I engage in it: on my list of things I truly desire, there are some stuff that will never materialize, and I don't want to face this reality.

The point of an exhaustive wishlist is to be absolutely honest and follow our gut: yes, that's true, I really really do want at least one holiday home in Southern France one day! The point of the wishlist is to keep going until you absolutely run out of things you desire.

What happens when one writes a very long wishlist is that one then also connects to other desires, which are truer in a sense because they are closer to who we are. Once the big, bulky, non-PC desires are out on the paper and they're not going anywhere, there is space for the other ones to emerge. You don’t know what your gut desires until you get the big ones out.

The longer your wishlist goes, the closer to home your desires are. And then, very automatically, you feel like pursuing those truer desires and the holiday homes become quite secondary. You still want the holiday villas of course, and you can tell God that in a hilarious “cosmic ordering” fashion.

Of course, He then gets to decide whether that’s in store for you (not likely). But then, by that time, I don’t care because, right now, my immediate desires are a piece of toasted French bread with quince jelly, a cup of coffee, listening to Marcello's Oboe Concerto in D and the everlasting fellowship of my God. On reflection, if I could have that last one (please!), then fuck the rest!

All credits for this wonderful trick: Regena Thomashauer's book: Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts, which I recommend to all women everywhere. Take what you like from it and forget the rest.