Late afternoon today in the distant fading sky are flocks of Canada geese circulating above the placid though burgeoning river below. The mirror upon the former icy gloss of the river’s face has revealed a rich blue with only a rim of pure white snow surviving on the shorelines. Today is Saturday, March 21st, the date often greeted as the first day of spring. This year the much vaunted inauguration was actually yesterday, Friday, March 20th.

The vernal equinox (astronomical spring) in the Northern Hemisphere usually falls on March 20, but it can occur on March 19 or March 21. This variation happens because the Earth’s orbit around the sun is not exactly 365.25 days, causing the timing of the equinox to shift yearly.

What in any event has by-passed the specific date is the collective agreement (among those with whom I chatted at Hummingbird Café) that it was a grand day altogether: the blue sky, the shining sun and the melting snow. The town was manifestly astir with visitors, no doubt our urban confederates seeking to remark upon the springtime conviviality.  At the coffee table where js, Donnie and I congregated over hot chocolate, espresso and water – with our fortuitous stream of friends (Shirley Fulton-Deugo, Allan Goddard, Duncan Abbott, Greg and Marianne Smith) – we all smugly and unapologetically agreed ours is a superb location!

Later, while tricycling about the subterranean garage, I was instinctively drawn to the out-of-doors. With a push of a button, I launched my trike in electric mode up the heated ramp onto the street.  From there I ventured a moderate distance throughout the neighbourhood before returning – with frozen hands – to the warmth of the garage. I had succeeded to gratify my seasonal yearning to re-activate Olympic cycling.

So much, I find, depends upon the way one sees things. Consider for example the difference between wistful and wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and decisions based on what is pleasing to imagine rather than on evidence, reality or rationality. It involves convincing oneself that a desired, yet unlikely or impossible, outcome will happen. It is a form of cognitive bias that resolves conflicts between desire and belief.

Definition:
Imagining a very unlikely future event as if it were possible

Examples:
Believing you will win the lottery; expecting a failing project to suddenly succeed without changes; or believing a strained relationship will fix itself without effort.

Distinction from Wistful:
While wishful thinking is hopeful and forward-looking, wistful thinking is often nostalgic, sad, or focused on the past.

Psychological Aspect: It is often considered a default, low-effort cognitive state that is more natural than critical thinking.

One prefers to think critically – not hopefully or nostalgically. Yet escaping the one or the other isn’t merely a clinical decision. Intelligence is not always either axiomatic or deductive. There are moments when emotion is paramount, when it is less mean-spirited or less remorseful to believe instead that forward-thinking (at any cost) is “much more better” (the same way honesty is the best policy – as long as you’re not in trouble). Certain realities are obtrusive; and, as a result, best avoided on balance. So when the inclination is to approach life with vigour and conviction, it hardly bears persuasion to think otherwise – no matter the putative violation of the future, the past or the present. I suspect that each of us has his or her own story about when it made sense to think wishfully rather than wistfully. Neither objective will change anything apart from our state of mind.  Certainly, in matters of purely critical thinking (such as medicine, law, accounting and astronomy), a margin of detail is supportable. But selective thinking for an optimistic outlook is an indisputable survival method. So, if and when survival is key – or, perhaps, even when there is the least impetus to do so – we are excused to think however we wish (wist?).

Tell, my dear Reader, if you can, what is the limit to the artistic beauty of life?  When does the music stop enthralling the view? Will we allow ourselves to perish or diminish for the additional reward of logic or reason? Shall we be overtaken? Who, in the end, is the winner? Naturally these are purely rhetorical questions – because we all know the answer. And this, in spite of any competing logic or reason. So wish or wist away!