The Brilliance of Every Day Magic

My college degree didn’t exactly prepare me for this next phase of my career. When describing what I do, I often get resistance to it before I get warmth.

Do you really believe this stuff?

It comes with the territory.

Why do most of us reject the idea of magic before embracing it? Why do we need proof for it to exist?

Magic is all around us if we’re willing to look.

Reality Check

Our world was built in the most linear pattern by people who stand to gain something from us, often driven by profit. If we don’t go to school, go to college, marry, and have babies, we can’t produce a class of people willing to work and spend money to make other people very rich—ad infinitum.

That process forces perspective on us, assigning the importance of financial success, hustle, and logic. Data, numbers, and unencumbered growth replace storytelling, nuance, and the true-to-life plateaus everyone and everything face. Others’ perception of success then determines our worth.

Our big imaginations are forced out; it’s no longer acceptable to share stories about magical coincidences, the music of Spirit slows, and the limitless imagination becomes limited.

But what if all isn’t lost? What if we can still be “responsible” people, achieve our goals, and have our magic too?

What if all it took was changing how we listen?

The Mystery of Magic

Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s magic.

This summer, I’ve been called to watch Disney’s Pocahontas, and it wasn’t until recently that I understood why.

In the movie, Pocahontas visits Grandmother Willow, an ancestor and spiritual guide for Pocahontas in the form of a spectacular tree. Pocahontas is having precognition dreams she doesn’t understand, questioning her path, her arranged betrothal, and her fate.

Grandmother Willow’s response:

Listen to the spirits, they’re all around you. They’ll guide you if you’re willing to listen.

We’re observers in this case, watching Pocahontas follow her intuitive prompts, as magic adds information to the path she should choose. She has direction, even if our perception isn’t the same as hers. We can’t argue that she has a vision for what we don’t understand yet.

We’re encouraged to experience magic the same way, even if others don’t understand.

What is Every Day Magic?

The first step is a simple one: accepting that magic is real.

It’s a tough one, especially since we can’t prove it in the traditional sense. It’s a piece of the puzzle our brain begs us to solve to make things so.

The enchantment of our lives lives in the liminal. In the mystery of it all, in the heat of our solar plexus and the electricity of our hearts.

Your heart is the flame that lights the glowing candles of your path, illuminating your world. It helps you see what your eyes cannot. It’s part of the mechanism telling you that you’re experiencing exactly what you think.

The root of these moments is our discernment. Not every single thing or part of every single day will be magic. But every day offers a moment of magic that we can’t explain, that we’re not meant to illustrate. It just is.

Now isn’t that magical?

How Do I Know It Was Magic?

My logical-minded friends, you’re benched. It’s time to start the vibes.

Like Pocohontas, rivers are important in my world. My name, Shannon, is literally a river—and you never travel the same river twice.

When you acknowledge and permit magic in your world, you will never travel the same river twice. The trees talk back, the birds have messages, and angel numbers suddenly appear when your life shifts. Things look and feel different because they are.

Have you ever had a thought or asked a question in your mind only for it to be answered by the TV, music, or a line in a book?

What about asking for the guarantee of change, and moments later, that email or phone call comes in?

When was the last time you thought of someone, and they reached out moments later?

What about asking for something, and it suddenly becomes available? Or talking about butterflies, and having one fly by. Maybe you sincerely wished for hope, and a star winked back.

Surprise! You’ve experienced magic. They don’t all need to be miracles. When your heart and solar plexus respond with the pure childlike excitement you thought you lost, you’ve once again stoked your magical flame.

We wax and wane on the possibility of things, and for our safety, our brains require it. But Spirit doesn’t have to abide by the physical rules we do; they can playfully deliver us the magic we seek.

The impossible sails with us through our dreams, in the words we craft, in the joyful dances we share, it’s in the birds, it’s in the trees, it’s the sun twinkling on the water, and the clouds parting for a bright moon.

Magic lives in our favorite songs, our favorite people, an unbridled declaration of love, in unencumbered hope, in a helping hand, or the radical act of helping yourself.

It’s the brightness of your dog’s eyes, the smell of a book, a cozy afternoon in the rain, or the possibility of a new adventure. It lives in the breeze whispering through the leaves, the flowers that lean, and all of the in between.

Be the enchantment you wish to see in this world. You are magical, after all.

Shannon is a writer, intuitive, tarot reader, consort for the departed, diviner of magic, and friend of the spirits. She runs SirenBooks.org, selling books and offering intuitive readings. Book a reading for yourself today!