Mundane Magic

Trust What You Feel Regardless of What It Looks Like

A couple of weeks ago, our family gathered at my parents' house in deep South Texas. I had a knowing that my son Jack should bring his guitar, and I convinced him to throw it in the back of my car for our 1200-mile road trip.

On our last night there, the small group of us still in town gathered in my parents' room, where my dad spends most of his time these days. Some of us sat on the bed with him and others were scattered around the room. Jack began playing, and I felt myself entering a portal—one of those spaces where time wrinkles and bends, touching core memories long held in my body.

My dad used to sit on his bed and play his guitar for us, a gaggle of little girls enthralled by his strummings and song. And now somehow my son was the singer and the strummer, and we were all floating together into a reality where both times existed together.

I was both the little girl hearing her father's voice and a mother hearing her son's. And there was a chorus of family—those physically present and those with us in spirit—weaving their voices together. 

I didn't want it to end.

My dad was in his element, singing along and requesting songs. When he wanted Jack to play one he wasn't familiar with, he would use is AI remote to get the TV to play it. Jack would pick it up. And on we went like that for an hour and a half. 

If someone were to happen upon the bedroom sing-along, they would not realize its magic. It would LOOK ordinary. In a culture obsessed with optics, it did not "look" like a mystical, time-bending journey, but it FELT like one.

What a travesty it would be to miss life's most potent magic because it doesn't look the way magic is supposed to look. Because the moment is not Instagram-worthy. My invitation to you is to trust the inner feeling of an experience rather than objectifying it and determining its essence off of optics. 

Take a moment to reflect on this day, this week, this month. Was there an experience that carried unrecognized magic? If you discover one, don't berate yourself for missing it the first time around, but note what was happening and how it made you feel. 

You can cultivate space for more experiences like it, listening to your intuition for direction. And this time you will know the magic when you feel it inside you. When the "real" world slips away and you are floating in a new reality. Remember, this may look ordinary to the rest of the world, but if it connects you to a loved one; a younger version of yourself; the deep wisdom inside of you; or a knowing that transcends this world, it is your magic.

And it is waiting for you to recognize it. 

Note: I chose a picture of a lotus I took this summer at a lake near my house to accompany this post. They grow—most unglamorously—from the mud. "No mud, no lotus." And such is life. Don't get so bogged down in the muck that you miss what's blossoming from it. Spoiler: it's your magic!