SMART Goals for the Universe

How specific should our wishes be?

A realtor’s photo of the Christians’ house, with a bit of ours visible to the right.

We knew the neighbors who used to live next door to us as the Christians.

When we moved in, the man of that house decided that the deeded parking spot at the end of our shared driveway, which came with our house, was not ours. Our realtor kindly paid for a surveyor to prove that it was in fact ours, and she took the papers to our neighbor one day when I was home sick from work. She came back with bad news: the neighbor had said there would be trouble if we kept parking there.

I was shaken. We wouldn’t have bought the house without a parking spot, and I knew it was ours. Mr. Neighbor was out in the driveway with a measuring tape, shaking his head. I was tired. I was sick. I went out there to confront him. “What do you mean there will be trouble?” I asked. Then I surprised myself — I started crying.

The neighbor, an older Salvadoran guy who really wasn’t threatening, then surprised me. He apparently took pity on me and, patting my shoulder, said, “Don’t worry, we’re good Christians.” That’s how they were known to us ever after.

To be fair, they mentioned being Christian quite often.

Later that day, Mr. Christian Neighbor said he’d “come to his senses” about the parking spot, and after that we got along great with him and his family. When we needed a notary, he provided the service for free. When they wanted to use the driveway for outdoor parties, we moved our car. I even helped him save nearly $20,000 by connecting him with a solar installer who didn’t engage in highway robbery.

Still, we’d never be close friends. Or any level of friends. They were pleasant people and turned out to be good neighbors, but we had nothing in common. We couldn’t build the kind of community I crave with them.

So when the Christians put their house on the market, I wished hard for the kind of neighbors I wanted.

My wish was almost granted.

The couple who bought the house were the nicest people you could imagine; I loved them at first sight. In their 50s, they were old enough to potentially be interested in interacting with us, unlike the 20-somethings on the other side of us, who are friendly enough but don’t seem to want much closeness. They were outgoing, but not in that extreme way that’s so off-putting to my introverted self. They were just the sweetest people.

No sooner had I come to this conclusion than they told me they weren’t actually moving in. He was a contractor and was planning to fix up the extremely ugly house, deal with the unpermitted addition at the back, and eventually sell it.

We’d gotten so close to having the neighbors we wanted — so close.

Be specific in what you wish for

If you’re in the business world, you’ve probably heard of SMART goals. I loathe business acronyms with every fiber of my being, but this one is slightly less objectionable than most because at least it conveys solid advice. Goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Clearly, I’d forgotten to be specific with the universe.

Before you shake your head in disbelief, let me set the record straight. I want to make it abundantly clear that I DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE LAW OF ATTRACTION. I read The Secret years ago to see what it was all about, but I wasn’t down with its message that if you focus hard enough on the stuff you want, it will come to you. Emphasis on stuff.

I do believe that the energy you put out into the world comes back to you. But I’m not under the illusion that wishing for something really hard makes it happen.

Science backs me up. Research has shown that if you simply visualize getting what you want, you’re actually less likely to get it. If you visualize the effort and the steps necessary to achieve your goal, you’re more likely to get there.

Still, I can dream, can’t I?

Realtor’s photo of the Christians’ house as it looks now, repainted and with most of the metal bars removed. Better, but still so far to go.

The Christian’s house is for sale again. Since I have no control over who moves in — there’s no effort I could make or steps I could take to influence that — there seems to be no harm in visualizing my desired outcome. Here’s the neighbors request I’m putting out into the universe now:

• Must live in the house!

• Interested in building community and will become good friends with us.

• No dogs (we already have too much barking around us).

• A cat or two (so we can exchange cat-sitting).

• Indoor cats only (so Sparky doesn’t get into fights with them).

• Quiet (duh, but in the interest of being specific …).

• Will make the house look nicer (lowest priority).

Be careful what you wish for

Despite my current detailed wish for the neighbors I want, in general I try to avoid wishing too hard for any specific outcome.

When I used to go to a Vipassana Buddhist meditation sangha, my teacher showed us a cartoon in which a guy prays, “Oh Lord, may you strike down my worst enemies.” The next frame shows a lightning bolt hitting the man, and the next one a pile of dust where he’d stood. In the final frame, the pile of dust says, “Let me rephrase that.”

We all know about wishes to genies. No matter how you phrase them, they will go awry.

Even in a world without genies, the general principle applies. The truth is that we can’t see into the future, so we don’t know which present outcome is in our best interest. Each thing that happens affects what happens next; it’s all connected.

Captain Kirk learned this all too painfully in the Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever.” When he, Spock, and Bones went back in time to New York City in 1930, Kirk had to let a woman he loved get hit by a truck to avoid altering the course of history. If she’d lived, the pacifist movement she founded would have kept the U.S. out of World War II, allowing the Nazis to conquer the world.

Star Trek may be fiction, but our real lives are filled with examples of each event affecting the next, of things working out better when we don’t get our every wish. The current election season is a case in point. I wished hard for Biden to stay in the race and was sorely disappointed when he dropped out. Now, it’s looking like Kamala Harris may be a better candidate for this moment. Who knows. That’s the point: we can’t know in advance, though many of us have very strong opinions.

For that reason, my standard, all-purpose wish is “May the best thing happen.”

Still, I’m only human. I try to put that wish out into the universe as much as possible, but sometimes I can’t help wishing for certain outcomes — especially if I’ll feel the direct effects of whatever happens.

So I’m sending out my intention for the right neighbors for us. I’ll leave most of their features to the universe, but I’m still wishing for the kind of neighbors we want and the ability to build the community we want.

And: May the best thing happen.