How To Find The Magick
Recently someone asked me how to find the magic I keep going on about and I thought to myself ha ha ha… how do you find the magic? I was confronted dead on by the reality that I’ve been doing this intuitively for so long I might not be able to translate the cold hard facts, the proper “How To”, the real 16 Steps To Becoming a Magician. (I don’t know anything about becoming a magician. Don’t come to me for that or you’re likely to end up with six rabbits and a top hat just for fun, which is disastrous because everyone knows rabbits and top hats are strictly utilitarian.)
People love steps. They love structure. They want things to be put into little boxes with little labels so they can say, “Look how cute and little the steps are! This will be cake!”
But my friend, the magic is everywhere and the magic is unruly. The magic is decidedly not boxed up and packaged and ready to be delivered between two and three. It is, however, findable.
How do you find the magic? You go looking for it. You go looking for it but you’re in a bad mood and you dropped your coffee and you thought you had spotted magic earlier but actually it’s gone. Didn’t you grab an extra bit of it to take on the way? You thought you did but no, that was a pair of socks. It’s nice to have extras of both really, the magic and socks.
You go looking for the magic even though you swore you picked up some at the store only to get home and realize you forgot it because it wasn’t on the list (always put it on the list!!)
You go looking for the magic in the reasonable places only to find it days later in the forgotten pocket of a jacket you had thrown in the back of your car.
You go looking for the magic in the hopes of being able to find it every time, with or without intention, whether it likes it or not! Unfortunately, and rather delightfully, this isn’t how it works. You don’t really go looking for the magic, the magic goes looking for you.
The magic is under windows when you open them in the fall, the magic is in the smile exchange of a stranger who definitely saw what you just did, the magic is resting in old Christmas cards from forgotten relatives who loved you when you were small and hadn’t decided who you wanted to be yet.
It’s nestled under warm hugs, it’s hiding in harsh but effective words from your friend who loves you and wants to see you make better choices, it’s cleaning windows with rain in the summertime.
It’s calling to you everywhere all of the time, asking you to come back to yourself, come back to the work, come back to life. The magic is living and the living is fluid and if you think you can catch it with force, I feel mighty sorry for you. Your best bet is accepting its slippery tendencies and resigning yourself to participation not incarceration. (You don’t have to own everything. Some things just are.)
So how do you look for the magic? You don’t. You observe it. You move to a rhythm that’s attractive to it. You get excited when it chooses you and you clap for others when it’s their turn. Have you ever had an animal pick you out of a group of strangers? You are their favorite person and you didn’t even try? The magic is like that. You don’t go out and grab it, you make yourself available to it and if you’re lucky, it will choose you many times over.
Or you can go down to the Krispie Kreme when the “Hot Doughnuts” sign is on. It’s either one or the other.
The author of this piece would like to share some of the ways that life has communicated that things will be okay. Results are below.
The Roundup of Little Magic Things That Make Me Feel Sane:
A man stopped running to explain to his young golden retriever how to behave on the riverwalk. I’m not sure the little guy took the lesson…
This season of Great British Bake Off is especially lovely. It’s a really beautiful lesson on enabling yourself to feel joy and how to be a part of that with others.
Loose leaf tea has become my new indulgence. If you ever want to actually feel like you are crafting a spell, get yourself some Purple Alchemy tea and FEEL the power! (Or just enjoy it. That’s nice too.)
Next to me at this coffee shop is a gaggle of women eating breakfast and enjoying life together. You don’t have to go looking for the magic there, it’s all around.
Last night I spent the evening in low lighting from my string of stars. It’s nice to be able to hunker down in the dark days leading to winter.
