It’s good when the magic is gone

Yesterday, I visited one of my “magic places” for the first time since 2004 and discovered the magic was no longer there.

Do you have magic places?

I do. They’re places where the air feels different and the light looks different. Something about the atmosphere seems to alive and breathing and casting spells and painting pictures on your soul. Do you get what I’m saying?

Example (in case you don’t get it): Think of a place that is like a time machine that carries you back to your childhood. All you have to do is enter that space and something sad and sweet washes over your soul like half-happy teardrops. It may be your childhood home, your elementary school, your street where you grew up. It may be the place where you experienced your first kiss or you had several coming-of-age moments.

Magic.

Yesterday, I returned to one of my magic places and it was no longer magic.

I’m not too sad about it. I’m not the kind of person to go drink at the nostalgia well. The past is gone and it’s best to acknowledge it, give thanks and grieve in an instant, and fully embrace the here and now.

That being said, I was surprised to show up and find the magic gone. Like dropping in for a surprise visit on an old friend only to find that someone else bought his house and doesn’t know where he lives now.

Do I miss my old friend–the magic, that is?

Maybe a little.

But I was in that formerly magic place with my little boy and my wife. In that place, I’m a 40-year old man instead of the boy I used to be when I visited there. The magic may be gone, but I have something better now. Something that fits who I am now. Something that is far more beneficial and loving and magic-making to the people in my life now.

If magic was static, it would eventually succumb to stasis. If our lives stayed the same–if time really stood still–where would that leave the magic of anticipation, hope, longing, memory, and redemption?

Magic has a shelf life. And it’s a good thing. Because magic is only magic–when it’s being made and made again.

Thank God for that.