Asterisk Week 34: About The Genie in the Bottle
Sometimes it’s better to keep the genie in the bottle
Asterisk Project: International Creative Writing
In Week #34 of our Creative Writing Project, we wrote about the prompt “Sometimes it’s better to keep the genie in the bottle”, a suggestion from our friend and member Gabriela. Check out how our members interpreted this week’s writing prompt:
Sometimes it’s better to keep the genie in the bottle,
to get some liquor in the body
and to just forget about the rest.
Sometimes our wishes are not what we need
and we must accept that.
Sometimes what we get is what we deserve,
sometimes it isn’t,
but we’re still supposed to be okay with this.
Sometimes if we complain we’re overreacting
and if we stay still we’re complacent.
There is balance, though.
We have to seek happiness
and a clean conscience.
The rest is consequence
or a matter of acceptance.
I find it hard not to tell people of my plans. I feel that voicing out my ideas and plans are a great way to analyze it better, and getting it on my mind that it will happen. It took me sometime to realize that could be bad. Not all people in our lives want the best for us. I learned it the hard way. So now, I ty to keep my genie in the bottle for as long as I can. It’s still hard, and it slips out eventually. For example, when I got the opportunity to teach abroad I was so excited I wanted to tell the whole world, but I made the decision to tell a few people, and to wait until everything worked out to tell everyone else.
I make the conscious decision to only reveal some stuff when I’m 101% sure. Of course, nothing in life is that black and white, but I feel that this way of doing things have improved my life so far.
I wish I had more time
I wish I had more desire
To try make the life easier
But can I do that?
Is this possible?
Be careful what you wish
Sometimes it’s better to keep the genie in the bottle
Cause when the desire is prophesied
There’s no turn back
Sometimes it’s better to keep the genie in the bottle. I mean it. Although the idea of having a mythical creature granting us 3 wishes and a world of possibilities may seem seductive, the easy path is almost never as rewarding as the tough one. What I mean is: if the one thing you want more than anything else in the world was delivered to you in a silver tray, would you appreciate it as much as you would if you had worked hard to get it?
Ok, ok, I know that if tomorrow a huge blue-smoky guy shows up in front of me (I can’t help picturing Aladdin’s genie, sorry), I would imagine all the things I’d like to have or experience, all the stories I could live if I only asked him to make my wishes come true… However, I know for experience that when you have a goal and you dedicate yourself towards achieving it, getting there is one of the greatest feelings you can have.
For example, I bet it would be amazing to wake up tomorrow and be a world famous best-seller writer! But I do know that an even more incredible feeling is what I experience when I finish creating a new story. Everytime I write an article I’m proud of, I truly perceive myself as a writer. It’s the result of hours and hours of hard work creating something that makes sense to me and I know that the process takes me a step closer to become the writer I want to be. It probably won’t happen from one day to another, but I know that when this moment finally arrives it will be the best one.
So, for now, I think I will keep up the hard work and hope for the best. And if tomorrow a weird-shaping bottle appears anywhere near me, instead of rubbing it, I will just let it go.
Giedrius:
Somewhere in a parallel galaxy, where genies are real, exist two factions of them. Good one‘s — FREAL and bad one‘s KITTIES. When you are lucky enough to find a bottle, you will never know which one you could get because they look identically with no any signs for which faction they belong. It‘s a really big lottery so many people say that sometimes it’s better to keep the genie in the bottle just to be safe. There are also a lot of adventurers who love to find them and risk with their own life.
One of them is Kali Jahkim, from a small city called Jelaktant. He already found about 20 bottles and they all granted him wishes. His secret is that after he found the 2nd bottle, Jahkim asked so he could see what kinda person is in the bottle and then he decides is it worth a risk to release a soul from it or not. Like people say he is the only man alive after dealing with KITTIES faction devils.
On the plus side, genies can‘t kill people without a fair fight. They always give you an opportunity to have a battle. It‘s their codex and whoever tries to break it, he or she would vanish from existence so knowing that no one tried to do so in a long time. How they disappear nobody knows but thanks to that they are too scared to do something stupid what could punish them.
Would you take this prompt literally, like Giedrius, too? I find it harder to write sci-fi or fantasy ratherthan other kinds of literature, even though I love to read it fantasy. Giedrius told us that this is the beginning of a story… maybe he’ll get to finish it in some other week.
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