If You Could Do Magic

So what if magic was real? Like honest to goodness reality bending stuff? If you could do that? What would you want to do? I think about this stuff sometimes.

I wouldn’t want any sort of mind control - or even mind reading. I don’t think I want to have a creepy advantage over someone, and I don’t think that controlling somebody to get what I want is anything less than violence. Sometimes I like the idea of conjuring or shape-shifting or making one thing into another, but I also feel like there are so many unintended consequences if you were able to do something like that.

A lot of times, it seems like when people talk about magic and wanting magic abilities, it’s about shortcuts to what they want. And the thing is, technology has given us a lot of shortcuts. Some of them are wonderful, some of them are amazing, but all of them involve a trade off. We lose something in the offing.

When I was a kid — so many millennia ago — wanting something required developing patience. You either needed to invest effort and time to make something or get something, or you needed to wait. I like having whatever movie or music I want at my fingertips instantly. I really do! But there’s something wonderful about anticipation, and you get that when you’re waiting for something to happen that you really want.

I might like to try some real honest to goodness magical powers, but in the meantime, I think that love, kindness, and quiet consistent effort work their own special kinds of magic. People don’t always see the strings that you’re attaching to your world when you work with a light, open mindset. They only see the wonders that you can create out of your relationships and out of your ideas. And when people can’t see the strings, maybe you do have magic powers. Maybe you just didn’t realize that that’s what it was.