On Magic

[This is a short excerpt from a much longer philosophical essay of mine, musing on the 'subject' of magic. I'm currently pondering what to do with the full-length essay, so in the meantime, I thought I'd share a short snippet of it here!]

Children, by their nature, are open, mystical little beings. Not yet conditioned out of or cognisant of the need to weigh up the validity of believing or not believing, but instead always open. Feet on the ground - rooting into the earth, arms in the air - reaching up to the sky. 

Out in the garden one day during lockdown, I decided that I needed to move a selection of plants. I could tell you that I was moving them for their sake, but I should probably concede more honestly, that I was actually moving them for my sake. They were all alive and thriving, but they were also increasingly concealed from me, dwarfed and shaded as they now were at the foot of a mallow plant growing at a phenomenal rate.

My heart did question my motivations, but my head was muscular and adamant: what’s the point of having flowers and plants in my garden, if I can't see them? If they are camouflaged and shaded? 

They MUST want more light and space too, surely? I reasoned, egotistically (or perhaps, self-convincingly).

So I ploughed on. God-playing has never looked so scruffy and prosaic as on that day.

My son wandered out into the garden.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, already apparently unimpressed.

‘I’m just moving these plants to somewhere else, so that we can see them and they get more light…’

We both paused.

‘But they don’t want to be moved,’ he said a few moments later, adding - without apparently missing a beat - ‘…they just told me…’ 

‘What!?’ I asked… hot, irritated and frowning - and conscience well and truly pricked.

‘Yes… that one says it will definitely die if you move it, that one says it might be ok at first but then it won't be… and that one says it’s not sure if it will or it won’t’ he said matter of factly - as though conversations with plants are standard practice.

I was instantly snared - somewhere between the glare of exposure for the truth of what I was actually doing on the one hand (ie. playing God in my garden) and also stunned and speechless. 

But with the plants already dug up, I was too late in proceedings to be able to reconsider the mission, or at least completely ‘undo’ it.

All three plants were moved to their new ‘homes’. 

And my son’s predictions - or perhaps faithful relay of his conversations with the plants - whatever we ‘should' call it, were all without exception, bang-on. The prophesied fate of each plant came to pass exactly as he had relaid: one died almost instantly, one survived the move and the other survived a while but didn't thrive and then eventually also died.

I don’t know how to explain or 'defend' any of this with my head. Then again, maybe it’s just a coincidence - a three-times over coincidence that I’m choosing to read more into. I don't know - and I don’t know how to understand or where to ‘put’ it intellectually either. 

So I can only reason that it comes from another realm - a realm that my son apparently experiences no separation from...