Making a Wish

When I make a wish I close my eyes and see a huge theatre with a big stage. I walk onto the stage and look out into the audience, who is in the dark. I am the only one lit. There, in the place where I do what I am meant to do, I make my wish.

And then I think of the people I have known in my life who would want that wish to come true for me. Family members come to mind first, then current friends. Then past friends, old friends, distant friends. Teachers, mentors, students, and co-workers. Lovers, boyfriends, crushes, the heart breakers and the heartbroken. People I've known all my life and people I've known for instants.

I think of them, one by one, and see their faces. Whether they know it or not, they want my wish to come true. Even if they have hurt me in some way, or if I have hurt them, they are part of my storyline, and so they are part of what leads me to the knowledge of what will help me grow.

And then, the lights in the theatre come up, and I can see the audience. All those people I thought of are there. A full house; hundreds of smiling faces. They live in my safe place, in my sacred temple, in my heart's home, and they want my wish to come true. They all want me to be happy, successful, in love, fulfilled, clear, and at peace. They all want to see me realize my full potential.

I thank them for being there. And they applaud me, because they know that is my favorite sound in the world.

I open my eyes, and I am the strongest version of myself. I am filled with courage and love. I have made my wish, not upon a star or into a fountain, but in the heart of every single person who has made me who I am today. I am unstoppable, I am alive, and I have touched the miraculous.

Intentions

I am not really a holiday person. I don't have a favorite holiday, I don't really look forward to any particular one, and I don't get terribly excited about them. I always feel there is something forced about a holiday, a combined sense of obligation and expectation that mask whatever its initial intention was. But I'm also not a non-holiday person. I don't refuse to celebrate, nor do I get upset about any given holiday taking place. Mostly, I try to find something I can appreciate about each occasion and I go with the flow.

On New Year's Eve, I appreciate the opportunity to set an intention for a new year. I can set an intention on any given day, of course, but the fact that this one is supposed to count for a whole year- perhaps forever- gives it a different power. No matter how many times a goal may not have been met in the past, there's always a refreshed hope that maybe this time it will work. After all, we have been strengthened by another year- we are not the same people we were in the previous new year's eve- this could very well be the year when we do take up tap dancing, when we do learn Italian, when we do save enough money to go to Ireland, when we do eat more carrots, and when we do get around to reading Anna Karenina.

So I sit here, on the 31st of December, wondering what could be my intention for 2011. There are always the familiar dilemmas. Is it more important to think about acquiring a flat stomach or to stop obsessing over my body image? Neither has ever been a very realistic goal, so is this the year when I give up on both of them? Do I want to think about getting a reliable job or do I want to keep dreaming? Should I redefine my career expectations or should I feed my persistent fantasies? Do those things really matter, anyway? Maybe I should just go for "good health" and "peace on earth" and leave it at that.

I breathe deeply. I need to listen to my higher Self, I need to listen to my heart.

What do I really want?

As soon as my mind quiets down, I hear a response. The answer surprises me. It is clear and specific, and it comes to me in a very, very strong voice.

I want to be free of expectations without losing sight of what I am meant to be in this life.

Well. All right. That will be my intention for this new year.

I wish everyone a wonderful 2011, may we all listen to our inner voices and make room for what we really want.

Birthday Wishes

At 9:30pm on July 15th, 1985, my mother's water broke in the kitchen of my parent's first house. My dad ran in to see it, then ran out and started calling people and screaming, "the bag broke! the bag broke!" Off they went to a hospital, where my mother had a C-section. A couple of hours later, a big full head of black hair breathed its first breath on its own at 1:03am on July 16th, 1985. They named that screaming wrinkled little girl Larissa Daniela Bonfim Dzegar.

Today I went to an intense yoga class to sweat out this past year and make space for a new year in my life and, since I intend to live to be 100, to make space for the next three quarters of my life. It got me thinking about what I've accomplished and seen in the past 25 years and what I'd like to accomplish and see in the next 75. So, mirroring what Gloria Steinem did for her 75th birthday, where she made a wish list for the remaining quarter of her life (she too, intends to live to be 100), but instead of making the wishes about herself, she made them wishes for the world, I'm making a wish list for what I'd like the world to experience while I'm on it for the next 75 years.

In the next 75 Years I'd like...

- To attend many, many legal gay marriages.

- To see actors be treated with respect and dignity. (This is a euphemism for: To see Hollywood and agents and casting directors burn in hell. Make someone else feel like a dog.)

- To see a woman be elected president of the United States.

- To be GIVEN health insurance that covers birth control, birth, gynecological visits, menstrual needs, and abortions.

- To read about how sex education in high schools around the world include lessons on how much sex can be enjoyable.

- To open a fashion magazine and see women of all shapes, sizes, heights, colors, backgrounds, and lifestyles displaying clothing that is affordable and accessible to every woman.

- To talk to women around the world and hear them say "I love my body."

- To teach my daughters and grand-daughters and great-grand-daughters self-respect and self-love rather than skills to find a husband and procreate.

- To see domestic workers being given the same value, benefits, and treatment as investment bankers.

- To read about Hugh Hefner's death.

- To see the government fund the creative arts.

- To give natural birth with a mid-wife and see other women valuing that over hospitals, drugs, and male doctors.

- To learn that every child in the world has access to water, food, an education, a playground, and a park.

- To learn that Fairy Tales such as Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and any other sexist illusion-selling brain-washing story has been banned.

- To see fathers staying at home taking care of their kids as much as mothers.

- To see higher academia become a right rather than a luxury.

- To see "beauty" parlors close down and in their place open libraries and health centers for women.

- To turn on the TV late at night and see women talk-show hosts who do not feel the need to talk and act like men in order to keep their position.

- To see Brazil win 10 more world cups. (I just had to put that in there...)

- To see the distribution of weapons be discontinued.

- To walk past the "women's interest" magazine section at Barnes & Nobles and not find a single magazine that says, "How to get your man to propose" or "How to win the battle against cellulite."

- To eat ice-cream and not feel guilty after.

- To go to a yoga class in manhattan and see a room full of people of color.

- To see men who want to be single fathers pursue and be given that right.

- To hear my daughter ask me, "What is love?" and be able to answer, "It's the greatest gift in this life, and I have known it so many times."

Happy Birthday to Me!