Chapter 24
SEEK THE MAGIC!
Children seek the magic in Santa Claus, in the tooth fairy, in the adventures of little ones in books. As we get older the magic dims. Wordsworth expresses this in his poem “Intimations of Immortality”
"The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.”
So, look for the beauty that surrounds us, somewhere, somehow every day. Seek adventure, be attentive to the little things and find magic everywhere.
One January recently I flew from winter in Ottawa to an even deeper winter in Edmonton. It was COLD. But just as I was getting used to it, and seeing the beauty in the bright sun and clean white snow everywhere, we flew on to Vancouver in a brief hour. We landed in Vancouver in a totally different climate the grass was green, there was a warmth in the air, and here and there were blossoms. What a sudden change, yet we were in the same country and only a province away. I experienced a culture shock! It took a day to get over it and accept that it was real. To me it was like a dream. It was like in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy was blown from her home in Kansas to the Land of Oz. It was magic.
With international air travel this experience is a fairly common one, going from one climate to another, and one culture to another. But do we see it as just jet lag, or as a kind of magic.
Travel certainly opens up new worlds. How often you do get to some new place and wonder if it is really you being in this exotic place. But it is.
Walt Disney was a master in presenting the world of magic. He was a master in stirring the imagination, and seeing things in an exciting way.
Seeing a majestic view of mountains, or great waterfalls or waving fields of grain is indeed magic. But there is also the micro world of magic that is often missed the magic in a single flower, or dew on the grass, or an insect on a leaf.
There is magic in the world of new learning through friends, in books, at conferences, on the computer network. But see it as wonderful, as a child sees magic in a flower, or in a drop of morning dew. Or as one newly in love sees the trees, the sky, the whole world in a whole new and exciting way.
Seek the magic!