On Magic in the Everyday

Do you believe in magic?

Not the mundane kind in fairy tales or fantasy novels. The real thing. Harder. Truer.

It's not easy to see on the bad days, but the proof is everywhere.

Not hidden away, but right here. In plain sight.

Think of wires that tangle themselves when nobody's watching, as if life has a mind of its own.

Seeds, pushing upwards through the concrete having never known sunlight. Still knowing how to find it.

Water rising to the sky. Defying gravity. No incantation needed. We call it evaporation, as if a name makes it less of a miracle.

Everything that goes up must come down. But driving down a highway, planes hang in the air like they've forgotten how to fall.

Dogs wait at doors. The car isn't home yet. But they know.

See the way children look at the world. How they really look. See how grown-ups gaze at the stars. The gaze between two strangers soon to be lovers, more potent than any love potion.

People appear out of thin air when you think of them. Or behind you when you least expect them.

Street hawkers cry to summon walkers, and crying babies conjure loving mothers.

A toddler giggles. You made a silly face. Suddenly, the world is lighter.

In matters of capacity, human hearts defy logic. Some eyes hold entire universes.

Lint grows in pockets. Coins multiply in cup holders. Passport photos vanish when you need them. The small magics.

Love makes the years fly. Waiting makes the hours crawl. We look at the same clock, but it tells two stories.

Alchemies of scent transport us. One whiff of your grandmother's recipe and you're a child again. Memory is magic, painful at times.

An old song plays. Your first love is right there with you. Time bends.

You open your mouth and hear your father’s voice. Blood speaks.

Silence can be deafening. Absence echoes louder than presence.

Longing can make ghosts of the living.

Yet, remembrance resurrects: for a heartbeat, the departed return. The gone are not really gone, not always.

There's so much more.

Sometimes, it feels like you've lived this moment before. Maybe you have. A flash of a life you've never lived, yet intimately know.

You can miss a place you’ve never been. Where you come from can feel like a foreign land. One day, you’ll look in the mirror and find a stranger staring back.

You're here because a million other things didn’t happen. A magic of probability. It should humble you. Make you tremble.

See how the universe conspires, manifesting good for those who do good. An answer from the cosmos.

And words. Words are old magic. The oldest. They build. They destroy. Writing is a magic of creation, pulling something out of nothing. What is a book, if not a ritual of teleportation? What is “I’m proud of you” if not a spell that can transform a person?

Do you see it yet?

There's no such thing as an ordinary miracle.

It's all extraordinary, if you have the eyes for it.

Look around you. Really look.

It’s all magic. All of it.

And we are all magicians. All of us.