Having grown up in a home that was equal parts Christianity, philosophy, and science, I feel the need to define what magic means to me. Also, having attended enough open mics where incels take shots at women with dyed hair, I’ll try to keep my eyeballs from rolling out of my head while writing this.
I’ll start with what it’s not. Magic is not unscientific. In fact, most scientists will tell you that they discover magic everyday, and need to create new branches (or break old ones) in their previous schemas of the observable world.
Thus, magic is also not a formula that trumps scientific rules, such as shooting lightning from our hands or making potions that alter a person’s autonomy. Just because fantasy stories describe these powers, doesn’t make them true. You can enjoy Love Actually without believing that the power of love is enough to transcend a language barrier, just as you can enjoy a cleansing ritual without believing it’s going to do the work for you.
Magic, to me, is a word that describes elusive dopamine. It can be found in many fields, and we’re always chasing it. Generally, bursts of magic are surrounded by grueling discipline in a choice activity. Musicians and athletes bring uninspired bodies to their craft everyday. They warm up, get the blood flowing, and begin practice. Sometimes groaning through it. But every now and then, they hit a flow state and fly in a dimension that only thousands of hours could bring them to.
But because discipline is hard, many search for magic that is more accessible–such as hard drugs or toxic sexual situations–but harmful. Quick rushes are generally followed by solid crashes, and we feel more depleted than before.
The world really doesn’t know where to find magic. Most women are told, however subtly, that it can be found in men or motherhood. Most men get the idea that it is found in being needed, and passing along as many of their genes as possible. Everyone else gets told they have to fit into one of these categories.
We don’t really talk about magic’s connection to discipline, or the labor of self-discovery. But it absolutely does not happen without confronting our demons, or lingering in the bright fluorescent oblivion of loneliness. No matter how much love we have in our lives, we will have to face being alone more often than we receive the comfort and validation of others.
I’m finding little nuggets of magic in rediscovering the parts of me that I’ve repressed throughout the years. But it’s not a rush so much as a slow plow up a mountain. A few extra minutes of sleep, a single extra push-up, a little conflict that I force myself to engage in rather than hide from. A little metaphor I’ll use to put something into perspective.
All of a sudden I’m not the person I was anymore. No more rushes. Where did the magic go? What’s at the center of the maze, the old man asked, increasingly anxious and violent.
I highly recommend getting in touch with your inner child, although it is grueling work. You have to walk through all the unhealed damage you have in order to find them. You need to hold their hand as they tell you where they want to go, and as you teach them all the things your wise sage has learned. They need you to fight for them, because you are the only one who can. They need to hear that it’s okay to lose, and it’s okay to fall.
I’m still tempted to reach for hot, fast-depleting dopamine when I haven’t put the work in to walk with my child and my sage hand-in-hand. And we live in a world that profits from our own harmful decisions and our disconnection from ourselves. But I’m learning, by doing the same thing most days, that there is no predictable rush. There are many magical dimensions in life, but we have to be the ones who put them together, and there’s a lot of tedium. Like a scientist who has woken up at 5 am and pulled herself into the lab for the 867th day. I will put on the same glasses, walk up to the same microscope, and find new chaos, wriggling with entropy. And I will dive headfirst into the thrashing wavelengths of my inner cosmos, before it’s time to get back into the car and complain about traffic.
Because like, what’s the deal with cars?
