Wishful thinking

Taking a quick break while adding a new ground fault interrupter circuit to Calypso's factory wiring ...


A friend of mine used to work in a computer store. He told me about the time he'd sold a Do-It-Yourself Income Tax program to a customer, who angrily stormed back into the store the next day claiming Fraud! and demanding a full refund on the spot.

My friend asked the man what was wrong.

"To begin with," the man shouted, "yesterday you told me this program was all I needed to do my own taxes. But when I got home and read the instructions, it said I also needed a computer! How on earth do you people keep getting away with pulling stuff like this?"

True story.

I've got another friend who works at a marine parts store who was also forced to deal with an irate customer.

This fellow had just purchased a DC inverter/battery charger (it creates ordinary 110-volt electricity from 12-volt boat batteries; it'll also re-charge the battery when the boat's plugged back into shore power) and demanded not only a refund, but also an explanation of why the inverter didn't work like it was supposed to.

In a nutshell, this guy thought he could plug the inverter's output back into its own input ... thereby creating his own source of perpetual electric energy.

Like OK then, Issac Newton.

Both these guys were obviously adults, well past voting age and fully capable of making and accepting responsibility for their choices (just like the rest of us), and would certainly be insulted by even the most patient attempts to explain that their thinking wasn't due to ignorance ... but resulted from blindly pursuing and engaging Wishful Thinking ("I believe it because that's what I want to be true!") and avoiding what should be obvious by now: Reality doesn't adjust or adapt itself to satisfy our personal wishes and expectations.

These guys were expecting they could wish themselves a shortcut to the solution they desired ... but in each case, Wishful Thinking only pointed them to a Dead End.