It all started around the same time last year. A mindful meditation upon a full moon. “Pen all your wishes with red ink on yellow paper,” one of my yogini sisters dared us to do, “and meditate upon it on the coming full moon. But be careful what you wish for, `cause you just might get it all and then some you don’t want.” And just like that the lyrics of Chris Daughtry, ‘I’m going home’ were stuck in my head. 

“What the hell,” I thought, I got nothing left to lose. I ain’t gonna say I hit rock bottom, but in a way I did. Only I didn’t think it was fair using that saying as I was still healthy and fortunate. I had just left everything behind I got comfortable around in the past years, which was a choice. So it felt like a blank page where I had to write a new chapter and I had no fucking clue what to write. So yes, why not ask for some rainbows and unicorns with red ink on yellow paper?

I do not believe in these hocus pocus kind of things, nor did I believe in luck. But I was on and off in reading ‘The Secret’ of Rhonda Byrne, which I still haven’t finished as I got stuck in experimenting with visualizing free parking spaces. It worked by the way, okay almost every time, it’s often enough to be creepy. So I figured, maybe this thing called ‘Universe’ actually works. It doesn’t hurt to wish upon a shooting star, as long as I don’t build up expectations and be disappointed when Santa thinks I’m too old to write letters and not actually do anything about it, as dreams don’t work unless I do.

So I did, on the full moon of January 2019, I wrote a full A4-sized letter with red ink on yellow paper. When I started writing, I suddenly realized I had so much to wish for. What the hell! I was so into it, I forgot she warned me to be careful what I wish for, because what if you’re not ready to receive? On the floor of my cabin office, I folded the letter palm-sized and held it between my two hands in prayer in front of my heart.

With the doors wide open, the full moon straight above, I closed my eyes and recalled what I had just write in the letter. I began to envision and feel what it would be like to have what I had just wished for. This whoosh came over me, the well known whoosh that came with relaxing your shoulders and noticing your breath. By then I had gotten the hang of wandering to the future and revisiting the past without holding on to it, but instead just watch and feel this present moment. And so it all began.