In other cases, the wish is granted but with unsavory Consequences.

. Wishes Only Come True When You Make Them May 19, 2012 (page A7)| By TIMOTHY CHAMBERS, The Hartford Courant It's funny, but our culture can't seem to make up its mind whether it would be a good thing "if words could make wishes come true," to borrow a line from singer Jim Croce. On one hand, tradition often cues us to "Make a Wish!" We wish over birthday candles. Thanksgiving turkeys hold wishbones. We pitch pennies into wishing wells. We wish on falling stars, and we wish on "the first star I see tonight." But then, on the other hand, we have a swarm of cautionary tales about mischievous genies. In all these stories, characters who make wishes quickly come to regret their choice. We can tally a trio of different ways that these characters' wishes go awry a list we might call "The Three C's of Wishes Gone Bad": In some cases, the wish is granted but at an unbearable Cost. In the classic W.W. Jacobs story, "The Monkey's Paw," an elderly couple (Mr. and Mrs. White) find themselves in possession of a magical, wish-giving monkey's paw. They wish for $200 to pay off their mortgage. Right away, there's a knock at the door. It's the owner of the company where their son, Herbert, works. Herbert, the owner explains, has just been killed by machinery at the workplace. Then the owner presents the Whites with a deathbenefit check for exactly $200. So the Whites got their wish, but at the cost of their only son. An example of this appears in a 1960 episode of Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" television program, "The

Man in the Bottle." In that tale, shopkeepers Arthur and Edna Castle liberate a genie from his bottle. They wish for riches: a cool million dollars. The genie effortlessly conjures a pile of money from thin air. But then an unfamiliar fellow enters the Castles' shop. He's from the IRS, and he presents the shopkeepers with a crippling tax bill. So the Castles got their wish, but hadn't considered the consequences: Windfalls carry tax liability. In still other cases, the wish is granted but only along with self-defeating Circumstances. Suppose you wish for a yacht, for instance. You get it, but the genie plops the boat in your basement. Another example appears in a 2000 episode of "The X-Files" program, "Je Souhaite" (French for "I wish"). In that story, FBI agent Fox Mulder is offered three wishes from a 500-year-old genie named Jenn. Mulder wishes for peace on Earth. So with a shrug, Jenn grants the wish by making every other person on the planet disappear. Oops. So our traditions invite us to make wishes, but our folklore warns us that we make wishes at our peril. How might we unravel this odd knot? Well, it turns out that there are two kinds of wishing.

The first kind of wish simply "expresses a desire" (as Webster's Dictionary puts it). Suppose, as I blow out my birthday candles, I wish for good health. This sets a goal for myself, but I still expect to do the footwork to achieve that goal (through proper diet, exercise, and so forth). Genies, however, offer a more seductive kind of wish. Not only do genies ask my heart's desire, they also promise to give me that desire, without my doing a lick of work to earn it. In other words, I say what I want, and my merely wanting it makes it so. But this kind of lazy expectation is just what we mean by "wishful thinking" an unwise habit, indeed. "Be careful what you wish for," we often warn. But perhaps we should also say, " and be careful how you wish for it." If our wish includes a willingness to work for the goal, then it will serve us well. But if we wish while expecting the words alone to make it come true, then that's just like asking a genie to do our bidding. And as we all know, genies don't take orders they only make mischief. Timothy Chambers of West Hartford has taught philosophy at various colleges in Connecticut and Rhode Island. He can be reached at tcham71@gmail.com.