February 2009 - WANT: Be careful what you wish for, you may not get exactly what you wanted.

Thinking about today's post, the story called "The Monkey's Paw" came to mind for some reason. It is a short story by W. W. Jacobs, published in 1902. The basic premise is that the holder of the monkey's paw gets to make wishes that do come true. However, the wishes were granted with consequences. In the story, a man wishes for money. He receives the money but it arrives because of the accidental death of his son. The couple then decides to wish for the son back. He of course comes back, but still mutilated from the accident. As a final wish, the man wishes to have the knocking at his door stop. The knocking was from his mutilated son and his wish is granted.

The moral of the story, as put forth in Wikipedia is contained in this description of the paw:

"It had a spell put on it by an old fakir," said the sergeant-major, "a very holy man. He wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow".

Naturally, there is no Monkey Paw, so this fate is merely a story. However, it would appear that many who wished for wealth did so at the peril of others. The Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard Madoff comes to mind.

I have a belief in the quantum pool concept. Which in my head goes like this. Each of us has the ability to change our reality instantly. For example, I have something I call parking karma. Some days the parking karma is stronger than others, but always it results in the following. I pull into a parking lot and it appears full. Usually I am advised by a passenger to simply find the next available spot and park. My response is normally, no, I think there will be a open space near where we want to enter the building. Unscientifically, I have recorded about a 95% positive result in these situations. This is due to the fact that no matter what the current situation, my control over the quantum pool "makes" the open spot exist. I don't visualize any adverse consequences for myself nor others, so there isn't any. But one might imagine that the cause for the opening was that the car to be parked there became disabled in some way so as not to arrive to fill the spot.

Crazy? Of course it is! No one can do this! But it happens on a regular basis and for more things then just parking spots. Don't know why. Don't know how? I don't question it either. It just is.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone understood how to do this AND more importantly, could do this without adversely affecting anyone else? We could all have what we wanted.

Here's where it gets messy. Not that any of this has any basis in reality. What happens if two individuals want conflicting things. How would the quantum pool allow this to exist? Would this be the matter-antimatter situation that no one ever wants to see occur? Of course not, remember this isn't real. It is just my imagination.

Could this be the time when they each get what they want, BUT, both must live with the consequences. Could be. This might be "the monkey's paw syndrome".

Well, headed back to get some more cold medicine. That last bunch really did the trick. What was I talking about? Oh well, what the heck, I need to go write my post for February's WANT blog... maybe after some more meds and a nap.
TTFN