Wishes and origin

I have decided that since I am doing a project based around wishes then it's appropriate for me to look at the origin of wishes and how we have been brought up and influenced to think a certain way about them or how our expectations of wishes have changed.

As a child I know I grew up thinking that wishes could come true. After all, why else would my parents get me to make a wish blowing out candles on my birthday. Or why are you told that if you find a loose eyelash to blow it away and make a wish. Then there's the element of wishing upon a star, a lot of which started with Disney and the fairytales. There is also the popular lullaby written for Pinoccio.

Reading up about the lullaby it has actually become a christmas carol in several countries (Japan, Sweden and Norway to name a few). The Swedish version is called Ser du stjärnan i det blå, roughly translated: "do you see the star in the blue(sky)", and the Danish title is "Når du ser et stjerneskud", which roughly translates as "Whenever you see a shooting star". I really like the names they use and I'd be interested to see if i can find the actual lyrics and use them.

I'd be interested in perhaps putting the Swedish one to good use in my project somewhere because as a child i always use to wish to see the Northern Lights. It got me thinking that I could possibly have the phrase 'i wish' in several different languages at the front of the book I want to make that shows all of the photographs.

There's also if you have a wishbone you and another person break it and whoever is holding the biggest piece gets to make a wish. I'd forgotten there were so many of these!

You only have to consider how many times in your life you've said 'I wish...' and followed it with a material thing or a want from life to realise that the meaning of a wish may change to you and you may no longer have the same childhood beliefs, but the premise and the meaning is still there. Behind all of us there is the hope that wishes could still come true.