Magic Moments

Magic Moments
Copyright © 1995 by Rodger Stevens

There is magic in our world. It occurs all over the place, but sometimes it takes a little extra jolt from circumstances for us to see it.

I recently received that extra jolt, which took form in the drama of watching my younger son Jed wrestle for the California state championship in his weight class. Last year he was an also-ran. This year he finished his season with a record of 41-0 with 36 pins, and was named the MVP in every tournament that gave one, setting all sorts of school and state records in the process. This was the first time I had ever seen him wrestle, and even though his older brother had prepared me to be impressed, I was awed.

I saw Ervin (Magic!) Johnson play basketball, I saw Jack Nicklaus play golf, I saw (and heard) Andres Segovia play the guitar, and I saw Jed kick butt.

Magic? Yeah, and in a way I never expected it (don’t the best things in life always arrive that way?) Okay, the kid’s got all the tools–he’s strong, quick, smart, talented, and determined. He has found something that turns him on, something he loves to do. Goaded no doubt by his desire to succeed, his performance was charged with an aura of something I can only call magic, even discounting the element of parental pride. His opponents, their parents, and I weren’t the only ones in tears that evening.

It jolted me so much I actually started thinking. The highest within us is the most powerful, but it is also the most normal. I didn’t used to believe that, but now I do. When something powerful hits you, it shakes up a lot of things, putting them up-side-up again.

How do we find that highest whatever-it-is, if it is also the most normal? Joseph Campbell suggested that we follow our bliss. In the mundane world of meals, money, kids, spouses, work, and whatever else we have time for, where is there room for higher pursuits, let alone bliss?

As it turns out, the best place to find the best is right where you happen to be, which is far more normal than what usually passes as normal. The highest things are also the most ordinary (which is what the marketplace doesn’t want you to know). The magic in life is like the molecules in wood: regardless of shape, color, or subjective value, the molecules aren’t ‘in’ the wood–they ARE the wood–there’s nothing else.

When we treat magic as occasional, special, or rare, we are cheating ourselves out of just about all of it. How? By cutting ourselves off from it by believing it to be special, occasional, etc. I’ll tell you why kids are so magical: they haven’t learned yet how to be outside of that magic which they find everywhere. They glow with curiosity, they tremble with excitement, their energy is infectious to anyone not numbed down by the self-importance of ‘grown-up’ values (the excitement level around children is proportional to the square of their number). If it weren’t for our adult(erated) egos clouding up our awareness, kids could teach us volumes about ourselves.

Thinking about that tournament, thinking about the awe and appreciation in which the crowd held my little boy, I realized that by doing ‘his’ thing, he was releasing that magic within him, and through the context of the meet, sharing it, like a radio transmitter shares its vibes with the world around it. That night, the whole crowd felt it.

What about you and me? Our roles are probably not spectacular, our crowds may leave extra fingers on one hand, but the magic is the same. You don’t find it out there, you find it in here. Unless you find it “in here”, then no “out there” will ever satisfy you for very long. Try going in … it’s MAGIC!