“You want to know how the strings are pulled, but why do you insist on looking for the strings? Feast instead at the magic before you.”
Dear Universe,
When I was a little girl, I loved watching magic tricks. It didn’t matter if it was one of my older brothers doing a card trick or a T.V. special complete with theatrics, lights and drama. No matter the style or complexity, I was in! I would get completely captivated and immersed in the experience.
So this past summer, when David and I were in Las Vegas, and we bought tickets for Mat Franco’s Magic Reinvented Nightly, I was excited. We had never seen a professional magic act done live and it seemed like a fun thing to do.
Right off the bat, the audience was entertained by Mat’s wit, card tricks, and unexplainable disappearing and reappearing acts.
At one point during the show, Mat spoke to the audience about how when people witness his magic tricks, they immediately want to know how he did it.
They guess. They ask. They hypothesize and come up with an answer that seems logical to them.
He shared how he never understood this. He wondered why we had to know how the tricks were accomplished. After all, when we watch movies we don’t stop and question how every shot was filmed and every stunt was done. He asked us:
“Why can’t you just watch and enjoy the magic?”
He was right. In my mind, I was already working out how the magic was possible. I wasn’t just sitting back and enjoying; I was sitting back trying to figure it all out.
But the need to know how the tricks are done defeats the whole purpose of being entertained.
It takes us out of the enjoyment of the moment. Just when we are about to have fun and simply roll with it, our logical minds perk up, interrupting, and begging for answers.
We get in our own way of joy.
I think we do this more often than we realize. In our lives—our everyday, routine lives—we crave answers and knowledge to things that sometimes are better left unknown.
We need to know how it’s all going to work out, and when it does, we want to replay every single moment that led to the finale.
We ask for a sign, see it and then need to explain how we saw it.
We pray for a miracle and when it comes, we want answers. Instead of basking in gratitude, we act like detectives, searching for logical clues to help us rationalize and explain what we just witnessed.
But why do we need to know how it’s all working out and coming together?
Why can’t we just sit back, trust and enjoy the unfolding of our lives? Why can’t we let ourselves be taken over by the magic, even for a little bit?
What are we so afraid of?
If we make the conscious choice to suspend our disbelief, to just believe in magic—even for a moment—we might enjoy the arrival of our blessings that much more. We can sit back, feel amazed by all that’s transpiring and feel swept away by the beauty of a miracle washing over us.
It’s hard to drown out the voice inside our heads—the one that nags for answers and won’t shut up until we have them.
But life isn’t always about finding answers or knowing why and how things are working out. Life isn’t always a clean cut equation where the numbers add up nice and neat.
Life can be tricky and messy and filled with fractions of answers, fragments of solutions and divisions of parts. It’s not always about the process—of how we get from Point A to Point B. Sometimes life is about the bottom line where what we see, is all we are going to get.
When I was a kid I didn’t need to know how the rabbit was pulled out of the hat, or how the card I chose was left on the top of the deck. I didn’t ask why saying abracadabra made everything appear or disappear.
I just watched in amazement, believing in it all. I believed in the power of a cape, a wand and few special words.
I believed in the power of believing.
Sitting in the audience of the show that day, I remembered what a powerful feeling that is. When we stop to question, wonder, speculate and guess, all the magic disappears from our lives.
I want to bring back some of that childhood magic in my everyday life. I want to live consistently reminding myself and feeling like life is working out in the most amazing way—where connections are never coincidental, things are falling into place exactly as they should, and miracles are always transpiring.
Because deep down, I believe they are.
With Gratitude,
