Who Said Be Careful What You Wish For?
Hint: There is a moral to this story.
Have you ever made a wish and got what you wanted, only to find the reality did not match your expectation? Or that it somehow didn’t fulfill you in the way you thought it would?
Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true!
The origin of this saying is Aesop’s Fables, the world’s best known collection of morality tales (circa 260 BC).
Kudos if you recognized the source!
There’s a reason so many lottery winners end up as cautionary tales — as depressed, broke, or worse. It’s because they have a clear idea of what they want, but they don’t consider how their lives will change when they get it.
When we get what we want, we wind up less happy than when we started.
It’s ironic isn’t it?
We often fail to consider the implications of our wishes coming true.
I can attest to this. As a teenager I dreamed of backpacking around Europe. I saved up for months to buy my plane ticket. The reality turned out to be very different from my fantasy. It was freezing cold. I was homesick. I didn’t get along with my travel companions. At one point I ran…
