Explaining the Understood

“It’s magic!” The wondrous cry of a young child at Christmas morning, or upon discovering something they have no prior experience with- it is their explanation. As knowing adults we smugly smile, secretly looking to find what the “real” explanation is to this ordinary phenomenon. Yet, even as adults, we seek it. We feel led to go and pursue it physically, mentally. We seek to see the wonder, feel the special feeling, and want to find the sparkle in the lining of the silver cloud. Never do we truly let go of that desire that wish, to find magic in ourselves, in our world, in our minds. Why does it grow farther from us the older we get? Why do we not allow ourselves the luxury of exclamation, of belief? We have all been conditioned to know true answers and thus forgo the ones that are based on emotion, of “feeling”.

Some people groups seem more likely to embrace the imagined, the intangible things, more willing to find the unbelievable. Yet, in the United States, we are commercialized, absorbed in media and definitions of things, unable to even imagine, much less believe in it. Here we are, part of our spirits still crying out for the unbelievable, with eyes that will not see it, minds that can not conceive.

A single reality is shaped by all those around it, those that reinforce it, those that make it real. Alone, we have our own minds, but surrounded by others we have the greater “social consciousness”. There is nothing to challenge us to continue to look, but we still do. I think that observing this in others, in myself, I want to tell them, “it is there, magic is still there!” Maybe the mistake is the presupposed assumption of how it will present, maybe it is the lack of understanding it that makes it impossible to see.

If I were reading this, a logical thinking person, I would tend to say that this was whimsical thought, naiveté. But since I am writing it I ask you that would say that, where did Einstein conceive of space and time intertwined, what made Galileo challenge the current thought on our place in space, what made any of the great minds choose to experiment, to question, to believe something other than the norm? They had the courage to look beyond themselves, to discover the magic that they knew was there, the answers not yet found, the places unsought. The journey and questions that motivate us all to look for magic in our world seems to me to be the very essence of humanity, and it is beautiful. The next time you feel the pull, see something that makes you wonder, hear the exclamation of some young mind, stop! Consider the world around you anew, and seek to understand the understood- again. I will.