Children see magic in every moment. That yearly visit from Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy making them forget teeth were gone. The last day of school before summer begins. The first snow of the season. The last frost before spring. All of it means something. It marks a passing of their moments. There is no moment bigger of smaller than another. They all carry the same weightlessness. Children are not caught up in any other moments. They are in that moment, exclusively.
Until a moment is fully experienced, it cannot be explained. There are no words that can define a moment. Each one existing simultaneously together.
Adulthood ushers in a different relationship with moments. There are no magic ones. Each one feels like a stone resting upon our shoulders. We are not over the last one and another one hits us in the face. Moments that use to mean something become lifeless.
Magical moments are elusive. We rage against everything and everyone looking for something that remains hidden. The magic that used to surround us. We become at odds with our moments. They become our enemy. We waste the ones we have but secretively want more. That is the badge of adulthood, wasting and wanting.
The Devil Card in tarot has many iterations but the same theme, chains bound to nothing. It is the opposite of the cliché, “you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.” It symbolizes “you can freely go home but you choose to stay chained here.” Choice is a topic that heavily defines adulthood. Growing up meant that the choices were ours. No longer would we have to listen to others. But instead of running free we walked into a cell, closing the door behind us.
As children we feel 20 feet tall, impervious to everything. Human consciousness starts chipping away at childhood wonder. We are conditioned to believe we are limited and small. The connection we once felt starts to glitch and dim. The term “coming of age” was created to make growing up sound like a glorious right of passage. It isn’t.
The term camouflages the truth, “coming of age” means cutting the cords to wonderment. It is not a destination to celebrate. It is a moment of great sacrifice and loss. The start of a long slumber till it is our time to awakening again.
We will, sometimes decades later. Where did those moments go? They feel all crumpled up together, like trying to read a faded newspaper.
Did none of those moments matter? None stand out. None felt magical. But it wasn’t the moment. It was our participation in the moment. Magic didn’t go away. We stopped creating it. The bark of a dog. The rainbow we made with the garden hose. That’s magic.
When we experience a moment fully and intimately, we infuse the magic into it. There is no magic moment. They are all magic moments, waiting to be experienced.