What Magic Have You Felt Today?
As I sit here in my apartment on a Monday afternoon I realized the day has drifted by and I feel totally fulfilled. I’ve done nothing extraordinary by the standards of most, yet I feel completely at ease, invigorated even. A subtle excitement fills my bones and I am lit up from the inside out. As I stood in my kitchen, sautéing rice for dinner later, this feeling of magic flooded me and made me wonder… what magic have you felt today?
Jagger had a day off from school and I opted to keep my calendar free to soak up all the minutes with him. As I made my morning lemon water I was reminded of our “stay at home days” from years ago when we would stay in our pajamas all day, watch tv or movies, play games over morning coffee, and lazily make our way through the day. There was no schedule or agenda, our only goal - to enjoy. I decided to recreate one of those days today, remembering that we didn’t have to do anything to create some of our happiest memories. As a matter of fact, I credit those stay at home days for a large portion of why Jagger and I are so close today and why I think he feels so secure in our home.
So, today, rather than planning what we would do or controlling how much time we spent connecting I decided to just be… together... loosely. On this day that started in the form of a long, slow, lazy morning with coffee together and a game of Upwords. We laughed until our cheeks hurt as we tried to find unique words to fill the board. After an hour or two of play we had used every letter except that pesky “qu.” Damn you game-makers for combining those two letters!
It was then that Jagger retired to his room for some gaming of another sort while I made some food and cleaned up the kitchen. We continued this dance over the next few hours, moving in and out of one another’s presence as we peacefully navigated the day. I watched a show, he gamed some more. We had some lunch, he gamed some more. I rinsed rice and chopped veggies for dinner, cleaning as I went. I wrote this blog post between cooking rice and beans and listening to my not-so-baby-anymore-boy play online with friends. All of it felt like pure magic.
Had others had a peek into our day there was nothing “big” or special that they may have noticed, but for me it was everything. It felt like a blanket of joy and peace warming me from the inside out. It felt like meaning… purpose. It felt important.
So many times we go through our day hoping for “big” moments, expecting ourselves to be “productive” in some way outside of ourselves, and we miss that living our life is “productive.” Being in each moment is meaningful. While yes, sometimes we have “big” moments and accomplishments that feel good, perhaps the most important feeling of all, the biggest moment we could ever experience, is the feeling of magic that happens when we settle into the tiny things. Maybe meaning is found in the way we laugh with our babies on a random Monday that breaks routine. Maybe it’s to be found in the routine of every other Monday. Maybe the magic is always there, waiting to be noticed.
If this resonated with you, reach out. I’d love to hear the ways you’ve experienced magic lately.