Thank you. In just one day you were able to save a damsel in distress, put The Riddler behind bars, and finally stop The Penguin’s reign of terror over Gotham. Those feats alone would have been worthy of my praise, but that is not why I felt compelled to pen this letter. Your courage and spirit did something else that day. Your story, if only for a brief moment, restored my faith in humanity.
I must confess that I have become a bit grumpy and cynical over the past 41 years, just ask my wife and two children. In case you doubt just how crotchety I have become, my nickname is “The Grunch” (which is what The Grinch would call someone who truly doesn’t like Christmas). On cue, I could give you hundreds of examples of why the human race is doomed; overpopulation, commercialization, violence, unemployment, religion, greed, terrorism, hunger, and selfishness. I am convinced that it is only a matter of time before Mother Earth gives the old Etch-a-Sketch a shake so she can start all over again, hoping to get it right the next time.
But then I watched as thousands of people came together with the sole purpose of making you feel special. It was totally selfless. Then it started to spread. In the most literal sense, your videos went viral, infecting millions around the world with positive energy and hope. All of a sudden, we felt just how different things could be.
So I started to think, what if there was a way to sustain that positive energy. What if we could expand the whole Make-a-Wish concept? For example, a recent study issued by Brown University’s Eisenhower Research Project estimates the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will top $4 trillion. They also estimate that 330,000 people have died in those conflicts, with just as many, if not more, permanently injured. How different would the world be if simply chose to allocate those funds elsewhere?
Imagine if we had given that same $4 trillion to the Department of Wishes (DOW) instead of the Department of Defense. With that kind of money they could dispense $100,000 wishes to 40 million kids throughout the world. And just like your experience, those wishes would touch the lives of everyone around them. We could literally infect hundreds of millions of people with the same positive energy and hope that you made us feel.
And there would be other benefits too. While I am certainly no foreign policy expert, I am pretty sure that granting a wish to a child is some remote village in Afghanistan would win the “War on Terrorism” a lot faster than blowing him up in a drone strike. Kind of hard to hate America if the DOW just granted your kid a wish. It might sound crazy, but it really wouldn’t be that hard to do. Seriously, I think it is infinitely harder to manage all of the unintended consequences of the military-industrial complex than it would be to simply hand out money to people in need.
Look, I don’t want to oversell the whole “you restored my faith in humanity” statement. If I am being honest, it lasted all of about 30 seconds. What can I say, I’m a Grunch. My only hope is that your beautiful story touched someone, somewhere, who will choose to make a difference. Someone who will just decide to do things differently. Part of me really wants to believe that the first Secretary of Wishes just finished watching your video on YouTube.
Respectfully yours,
Brian
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