As a little girl, Christmas was my favorite holiday. There was nothing quite as special as waking up early to presents and hot cocoa.
I would wake up at the crack of dawn and rush into my parents’ room, barely pausing to look at the snow-covered lawn outside. My mother would shush me and quickly usher me downstairs so I didn’t wake my father. Soon, everyone in my house would be gathered downstairs in front of the tree, ready to open presents. To a kid, this day was a type of magic like no other.
Soon, the years passed, and I wasn’t a kid anymore. Santa and his reindeer had left my mind, replaced by a new type of magic: Books! Every day after school, I begged my grandmother to take me to the library so I could find a new obsession for the week. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson … it was far too easy to be consumed by these worlds, places where magic and the mundane coexisted. Between the pages of these books, people could heal any injury, fly without a plane, and move things with their minds. How could our world compare?
I lived with this mindset for years, but one day, something changed. I was working at a summer camp when one of my friends mentioned that he attended a boarding school. He took the train there every year. How cool! To me, trains were special, reserved only for the best trips, but he said something that shocked me. He thought trains were boring. He had taken that trip so many times that he had lost his sense of wonder. It made me stop and ask myself: “How much magic had normality drained from my life?”
I pondered this question as I exited the air-conditioned building and got into my car. As I sat there thinking, the answer was all around me.
Looking around my room, I now see the world with new eyes. I look at my phone that allows me to talk to anyone at a moment's notice, and I think about how amazing this little piece of metal is. I think of my car and how it can travel faster than anyone imagined. I even think of my microwave that gives me hot food within seconds.
These things may seem small now, but none of these existed two hundred years ago. The world is constant in its advancement forward! We might not be able to fly like a bird, or leap back in time, but what we have isn’t insignificant.
Look around yourself and think of phones and cars and life. Don’t let routine suck the magic out of your day.
I believe that our world is filled with things beyond our imagination – you just have to be willing to see them.
