The genie grants you a wish. What is it?
If a Genie Granted Me One Wish
When I was younger, I thought the answer would be easy.
More money.
More time.
A beautiful house.
A life without worries.
The usual things people wish for when someone hands them unlimited possibilities.
But the older I get, the harder this question becomes.
Not because I don’t know what I want.
Because I want too many things.
I don’t mean possessions. I mean lives.
If a genie appeared in front of me and offered a single wish, I don’t think I would ask for wealth, fame, or success.
I think I would ask for the chance to live every life I’ve ever dreamed about.
Not forever.
Just long enough to know.
Long enough to walk around inside those dreams and discover whether they felt the way I imagined.
I would like to spend a season as a potter.
I’d wake up every morning in a sunlit studio with clay under my fingernails and shelves lined with pieces drying quietly in the corner. I’d learn patience. I’d learn how many failures it takes to create something beautiful with my hands.
Then I would live an entirely different life.
I’d own a tiny bakery tucked into a quiet street. The kind with warm lights glowing through the windows before sunrise. I’d spend early mornings measuring flour, brewing coffee, and greeting the same familiar faces every day.
After that, perhaps I’d disappear to a farm.
Nothing grand.
Just a simple life surrounded by open skies, flowers, and the rhythm of seasons. The kind of life where time is measured differently. Where mornings begin with birds instead of notifications.
Then I’d step onto a beautiful train and travel slowly across countries I’ve always wanted to see.
No rushing.
No schedules.
Just watching unfamiliar landscapes pass by the window while holding a cup of coffee and wondering what life looks like for the people in those distant towns.
And after that?
Who knows.
There are so many versions of me I’ve wondered about over the years.
The writer.
The painter.
The shop owner.
The traveler.
The dreamer who said yes instead of no.
The brave version.
The adventurous version.
The version who never worried whether she was making the right choice.
Sometimes I think what I envy most is not the lives themselves.
It’s the certainty.
The ability to know.
To stand in the middle of a dream and finally discover if it was everything I imagined.
But perhaps the real lesson is that we aren’t supposed to know.
Maybe life was never designed for us to experience every possibility.
Maybe it asks us to choose one road and accept that thousands of others will remain unexplored.
There is something heartbreaking about that.
But there is also something beautiful.
Because every unlived life becomes a dream.
And dreams have a way of staying perfect.
A genie could give me wealth.
A genie could give me success.
A genie could even give me more years.
But if I were granted one wish, I think I would ask for something far stranger.
I would ask to spend a little time in every life I have ever imagined for myself.
Not because I want to escape the life I have.
But because I have always been curious about the lives waiting behind the doors I never opened.
And perhaps that curiosity, more than any single dream, is who I really am.
