Tag Archives: Magic

On My Mind

Sleight of Hand

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Magic shows are magic either because we believe them to be or because we let them be. They are magic because we want them to be or because we let our guard down and appreciate what we’re shown. Magic shows captivate children because they have not yet learned to be jaded, because they are willing to imagine, because the laws of physics are not more compelling than handkerchiefs that appear and disappear or cards slyly revealed. Children believe because they have not yet learned not to, and therefore they are not disappointed.

I watched a magic show last week and caught myself looking for the tricks, looking for supports hidden in the darkness, or trapdoors, or poorly hidden props. I don’t remember when magic shows ceased to be magical and instead became an opportunity to call out magicians for precisely their specialty – sleight of hand. If we wanted to be swept away, to be amazed, we would stop looking for the gaps in the tricks, stop looking for the wires or behind the curtain. Do we always have to know better?

Sometimes, the answer is yes. We cannot expect magic to sweep us off our feet if we’re just sitting on the couch waiting for it to come along. We cannot expect something to change just because we want it to change without taking action in this direction. But we can let go of what we cannot control and let the universe unravel itself, which it always does, though often in ways that force us to abandon our plans and change course. We won’t find what we’re looking for if we don’t go out there to look for it. We won’t learn if we’re not curious, won’t see beautiful things if we walk only with heads down. Once we know that magic is there, we need to let it find us and be willing to accept it when it comes.

You could argue, that’s not magic. That’s not special or sparkly, and it doesn’t come with glitter. No, perhaps not. Perhaps there’s a lot of trust involved in letting magic happen, a lot of putting pieces into place only to then step back and just see what happens. To let what is going to happen simply . . . happen. Without looking for the reasons, without searching for complications, without poking holes in something beautiful. Sometimes, it can just be beautiful.

Children love magic shows because they let magic happen. And while watching that magic show last week, I tried to turn off the part of my brain that insisted on figuring out what was hidden and where. This is when I saw magic happen, too. And why not? It’s a far more compelling way to watch a show, and a far more peaceful way to walk in the world.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it. – Roald Dahl

Adirondacks, New York – July 2022
On My Mind

A little ray of…

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Hope

is the possibility for something different, something new, something untried, unseen, unfelt. Hope is the catharsis of tropical rain.

Yesterday I had a conversation with an old friend, probably the most adaptable person I know. “I could be angry,” she said, “but that’s just not how I want to be and it doesn’t solve my problem.” A few hours later, I had a conversation with a student who is really struggling with some personal issues. We talked about life and the universe, about meaning and goals, and about what’s left in the world after a goal is accomplished. Just before the end of the day, I had a conversation with another student about the future, a young man who has confidently and quietly made choices and is looking forward to the adventure to come. In the evening I talked with another friend who is considering, as I am, choices that could go anywhere and nowhere.

There are two common threads here and both have struck a chord with me. The first is that sharing and conversing with others, and especially young people, give my life so much meaning. I may not have solved any problems today but there are doors open wide, an invitation to listen, a shoulder to cry on. These connections with other human beings are vital to my sense of personhood, which is to be part of a wider world and walk hand in hand with those I encounter.

The second thread is that all of these conversations, though vastly different in content and tone, were sparked by the hope that there is something else if we’re willing to look for it. There are possibilities if we are willing to do the hard work of asking questions, making changes, beginning again, or beginning differently. And there is the excitement of a world yet to be lived and explored. If there were not hope, none of us would be talking in the first place.

Sunshine

is the golden bubbles that arise out of nowhere and feel like childhood. Sunshine is a periwinkle sky in the evening and the delight of an unsigned thank you note.

When I was little my mum told us how, growing up, she used to wash her long, wavy hair outside in the rain. I went out with a shampoo bottle once but I don’t remember it working very well. Not too long ago I changed into my bathing suit and joined a friend outside in a downpour, one of those rainstorms that quite literally takes your breath away. During a recent and memorable bike ride, it was all we could do to keep our eyes open as we, and everyone else caught in the sudden deluge, giggled and called out to one another, strangers, recognising the shared joy that filled the air.

Last night I decorated Christmas cookies and a gingerbread house with friends and I learned that icing melts quickly in the tropics and that one should put a base layer of icing on the tree-shaped cookie before adding candy ornaments.

Moments that allow us to laugh and play with abandon, to forget our adult decorum and our worries and responsibilities, are moments of sunshine.

Magic

is elusive if you’re looking because it can’t be seen. But magic is omnipresent if you believe it’s real.

Sometimes we say the same thing at the same time. We pick up the phone just as it rings. We send the same story or recommend the same book. Once we learn a new word, we suddenly see it everywhere. If we did it on purpose it wouldn’t happen this way, but it happens all the time when we’re just willing to be.

But sometimes I think we’re afraid of magic. We’re afraid to admit that we don’t have as much control as we wanted, or that there are forces in the universe we can’t explain. And this keeps us from the opportunities to get to know ourselves and others in such a way that allows magic to happen.

And so I ask: What could the world hold if we dared let it?

St. John’s Island, Singapore – July 2020

On My Mind

Back When We Had Souls

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I’m not sure if souls exist. I used to know for sure, I know I did, but now I don’t think I believe in souls anymore. As we all do, I’ve drifted from the pretty imagery of childhood stories into a world in which souls do not make rational sense.

And yet.

And yet.

I met a person who, if souls do exist, I would have to say has a soul. The word came into my head one day, suddenly and unbidden, but I knew it was right. I looked at this person across the room and sensed a soul. I knew this in the way that we know it’s going to rain when the sky grows dark and the wind changes. It was immediate and obvious and it frightened me. 

As adults, we live by routines and patterns, by socially accepted and endorsed ways of interacting with one another. We go to work, to meetings, out for drinks, out for meals. We entertain ourselves and each other. We pass the time. We have ‘responsibilities’.

But once upon a time, before all of that, we were children. We laughed and played and made up stories. We turned sticks into airplanes and we flew. We put on wigs and became witches. The sandbox became quicksand and the neighbor’s dog was a predatory dinosaur. In our fantasies, our younger siblings were the pets and our parents came from a different planet. We threw balls of fire and some of us got burned, but still we kept throwing. We claimed the swings as our boundaries and let our friends claim the tree line as theirs. Jumping from the roof with an umbrella was faith that, just like Mary Poppins, we could fly.

As children, we believed in magic. We believed that what we wished for could be, and we dared to make it so. In the eyes of a child, the child that I was, souls were possible because everything was possible.

It is in adulthood that we forget about magic. Instead we have practical, everyday worries. We laugh less often and we forget how to play. We’re too important and busy for that. We’re too concerned with the things we have learned that ‘matter’. We make sure to meet all our basic needs, to pursue and court relationships that allow us to belong to different groups, and to elevate our status to the levels that we believe we are entitled to.

We know that we have to get promoted before we can afford the mortgage on the house, and we have to do it soon because there are already three wedding invitations and one birth announcement on the fridge. Everyone else is ‘moving forward’, so what are we waiting for?

And so, magic is left behind. We forget the spells and potions, we forget the carefully delineated safe zones of tag, and we forget the glee of tearing barefoot across the grass yelling as loudly as we can. We increasingly channel our time to the pursuit of ‘personal progress’ and leave behind that was once so pure and central to who we were. We stop playing, and we stop being.

It is here, I think, that we lose the idea of souls.

As adults, we stop pretending and stop believing in things we cannot see. Looking beyond our adult boundaries into the joyfully cultivated worlds of children is a chore. And so souls, which are intangible, cease to exist.

Such a transformation, one which takes the imagination and supplants it with the material goals brought to us by ‘logic’ and ‘reason’, robs us not only of the existence of souls but of all those other beliefs that children are made of. Words which carried hopes and dreams are now said out of habit, if at all.

And so the progression through life’s journey continues and the price is the loss of the soul that made us who we were.

But such is the way of tacit acceptance of change. We do not recognise that this is what we are doing. We don’t notice the gradual shifts and how these lead us away from one world and into another.  

Once, we were pirates searching for buried treasure that we knew we would never find. The joy then was in the adventure of solving the clues. 

But as time passed, we imperceptibly became preoccupied with the treasure; the joy of adventure got lost and our souls vanished.

But what if?  

What if souls do not disappear, but are simply masked by the habits we develop, by the actions we mimic, by the words we pull together to intellectualise our actions? What if we suspend who we have become, if only for a little while, and simply look? And what if another was to do the same?

I looked across that room and without warning, without reason, I remembered. 

Once upon a time I was a child and I believed in magic. Back when we played pretend. Back when we trusted in our newest inventions. Back when finding all the pieces to build the perfect snowman was as much fun as playing in the snow.

Once upon a time I was a child and I knew we each had a soul. 

And it frightened me that I had forgotten.

Milford Sound, New Zealand – January 2019