Magic isn't Real and other Lies we tell Ourselves

"It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how something works"

Terry Pratchett

This last week I've led a slower life than the one I'm used to. I'm enjoying my time off from the training and competition of athletics, and instead filling my days with pottering in the garden, do-it-yourselves, reading, family and long walks, because yes I am indeed a thousand years old. But I've found a slower life has led to a faster mind. The inner-dialogue has in fact been inner dialoguing and at times drowning out the peace of my bimbling. It's at times like this where I'm not stampeding full steam ahead towards my goals that the ramblings of doubt start to creep in. Words like failure, wasted potential, burden and the like tend to rattle round the auditorium of my mind. However, I am finding an increasingly effective tendency to laugh at these thoughts. I am allowing them to have their five minutes because if you don't feel things, dark shenanigans build up and then it bursts and no one wants to be cleaning that up, but after this, on I go because how funny of me to have briefly forgotten that I am star stuff, with a soul and a heart and dreams, and really that's rather magical. The best way I can describe this is like when a dog gets really old and it starts barking at inanimate objects, or it's own shadow, even it's own farts, and you allow it because they're old and probably think they're doing important work and that shouldn't be poo-pooed, but you swiftly clamber on with life because ultimately, a chair is a chair, a fart is a fart and there's no need to give them too much air time.

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I've realised that the key to being able to regulate myself is to pay attention. When my body is telling me something, like 'your blood sugars are plummeting Pam', I always listen because my body doesn't know how to lie to me, whereas if my mind is telling me something, I tend to pay very little attention to that as simply, it's always lying to me. This is not because my brain is a rude sod (not exclusively anyway), it's simply how we've evolved. Our brains try to protect us by keeping us in one place, conforming to one reality, living one life that is proven to be safe by the thousands of previous days we have lived it. To dream is to open yourself up to disappointment. To believe is to offer the chance for an illusion to be shattered. But notions don't have to be real to make an impact. Belief doesn't have to be tangible to stand the test of time.

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Most of the stories out there these days are based on the narrative that the world is cruel, therefore I won't be, and at the end of the day, it's always just you and your little life so, why not go and be the person you exactly want to be, and be kind whilst pursuing that. Kind to others, but also kind to yourself. You have to rest; to reset, to refocus and to regroup. No great pursuit can be undertaken without a few pit stops along the way. Even in the day-to-day, you have to take time to check in with your soul; like me putting these words in this order for you and you taking the time to read them. Those abrasive feelings of failure and the acute awareness of the finite nature of life will always be bubbling in the audience of your mind, but you need not get up on stage to perform for them. You do not need to impress anyone or be puppeteered by the strings of time. Just strive to reach hearts and perhaps you'll touch a few stars along the way.

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Vincent Van Gogh said, as he pondered those swaying fields of Provence, "If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning". My mind likes to chatter on about wasted potential, but really there's egg on my mind's face because I'm still living so my potential is still here, I can always try again and continue to grow. The flowers are reminders of why the rain is so important, the harvest is the reminder of why the grass was so worthy, and why it always will be.

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Stars twinkle because of how far the light has to travel to reach us, the sky is not made of jelly tots, planets are different colours because their surfaces are different temperatures and flowers grow where seeds were planted. Thunder is not the clouds tap dancing, a cow couldn't actually jump over the moon, nor could it walk downstairs which is why cows tend to only reside in bungalows, and unless you've got a flux capacitor down the back of the sofa, you can't travel in time and back to the point at which you started. It's with these revelations that one could realise that magic isn't real, except for those of us who are kind enough to themselves to believe, then, it absolutely is. Thanks Terry.

LM

p.s - For the benefit of doubt; the moon is in fact made of cheese, Wallace and Gromit proved it so.

p.p.s - Jury's out on Santa. I'll let you know.