On Gatekeeping Goals
Breaking the cycle of magical thinking
As the calendar flipped over to 2026, I snuck away from the post-Christmas chaos to write at a coffee shop for a couple hours.
I was working my way through the YearCompass and I’d reached the part where you’re prompted to write down your intentions for the year ahead. At first, I eagerly scribbled every tiny and audacious goal.
The place was getting busy, though. People were milling about, waiting for their coffees and as a bottleneck formed between the ordering line and the pickup line, I found myself surrounded and suddenly self-conscious.
I had an impulse to shield my words from their view.
I had this visceral sensation of being back in school and trying to write a personal essay while avoiding the prying eyes of a hostile classmate, or attempting to discretely block out someone who was peering at my page during a test, or being weirded out when someone asked me to divulge the mark I’d received on an assignment.
But none of those things were happening.
These strangers—many of whom just looked painfully hungover from New Year’s Eve celebrations—weren’t even glancing my way.
Still, to have my innermost dreams (however ambitious or mundane) laid bare on the page felt deeply uncomfortable. But why?
I’m not shy about my work, or my interests.
If someone asks about my plans or ideas for the year, I’m always happy to share.
But none of these people were asking or even noticing I was there, so why did it feel like a single wayward glance could mess up my plans for the whole year?
Why did I feel so intensely protective of my privacy in that moment?
Why, even now, is the stream of my words throttled by vulnerability?
Perhaps it’s because this year’s goals seem hewn from a different material—one that was harvested from a previously unexplored quadrant of my imagination.
They are raw and unrefined, yet they feel precious.
There’s this Gandalfian leitmotif inside my mind:
Keep it secret. Keep it safe.
I dare not speak of my dreams aloud or even write them, lest this attract an evil eye. Or as if by uttering them I could render their power evanescent.
But as Gollum’s desperate clutching of the ring teaches us, to grasp too tightly or guard too fiercely is inevitably destructive.
This post has been languishing in drafts since New Year’s Day. I’ve been inclined to share my wishes in case it helps another person feel inspired to pursue their own, and yet I also feel compelled to hide my hopes away to preserve their potency.
Tonight I parked on the slippery driveway after my five-year-old daughter’s dance class. As she carefully slinked out of the vehicle and onto the ice, she took penguin steps toward our home while gazing up at the darkened sky.
“Mom, how do stars even show up? Where do they come from and how do they just appear sometimes?”
Before I could attempt to answer, she asked me to remind her of the words of the nursery rhyme “starlight, star bright” so she could recall its rules.
“I want to make a wish,” she whispered, “but what if I’m wrong and that wasn’t the first star out tonight"? What if I mess up my wishing?”
I assured her that it only had to be the first star she noticed in order for it to work.
“Okay,” she sighed, reassured. “I’m done now.”
“You made your wish?”
“Yes. I really want to tell you what I wished for but I know I can’t, mom. I would ruin it if I did, right?”
I nodded, unsure of the right thing to say.
It took me years to begin to recover from the affliction that is magical thinking OCD.
Before receiving a diagnosis, I lived almost four decades creating and adhering to invisible rituals and navigating the labyrinthine partitions and red tape of my wounded imagination, dogmatically following mental rules in order to keep myself and my loved ones safe.
It’s taken both a psychiatrist and a psychologist to help me unravel the tangles that unchecked OCD had made inside my mind.
This might sound like a flex, but together we’ve made remarkable progress.
If there’s anything I’m willing to brag about, it’s the work I’ve put in to drop my old rituals, unshackling my thoughts and words. I now let them run free.
This hard-won liberation is absolute bliss. It feels electric. Most importantly, it shows up as trust.
I trust that I can just exist, and that I will be able to draw upon my resilience, my creativity, and my amazing community as life’s challenges arrive.
Superstition becomes insidious when it grabs the wheel and causes you to start steering away from things you’d otherwise face or even embrace. To turn inwards and scrupulously avoid uncertainty.
This makes your world alarmingly small though, because uncertainty is everywhere and as unavoidable as death or taxes.
This year I’ve decided that in escaping the confines of my disordered thinking, I want to be brave enough to say I desire a big life, even if it’s filled with questions and mysteries and utterly lacking in sure things. I want hazy horizons and shifting rainbows and wide open spaces.
I aim to cradle my dreams with open hands instead of tightly closed fists.
I want to teach my daughter that she can wish on any star she sees, just for the joy of it, and that speaking her wishes out loud can not only be energizing but can also foster connection to others. I want to tell her it’s impossible to ruin a wish. I could even explain that sharing a wish probably makes it more likely to come true. There’s got to be some evidence to back that up, right?
In sharing our hopes with our trusted people, I’ll tell her, we can breathe life into both our dreams and relationships. And if in turn we’re trustworthy enough to learn about the wishes of our loved ones, we can lend them our support.
Tomorrow when she wakes up I will tell her that I was wrong. I’ll tell her that wishes are made of tough stuff and that sharing only makes them stronger.
One of my dreams this year is to finish the first draft of my manuscript.
I would love to know one of yours.