Finding Your Everyday Magic
This week’s Prefect Speech comes from Library Captain, Elisha, who encourages us to take joy and wonder out of the little things in life.
Each week, our Student Leaders share their insights with their peers in Assembly.
When I was in Year 4, I believed in fairies. Every single lunchtime and recess I would go out with my friends and build little houses near the roots of trees because that’s where I thought they lived. About three years before that, I believed that cartoon television series or movies were made under my bed. I remember crawling under there, spending ages looking for the land of ‘Dora’ or ‘Narnia’.
But, of course, I grew out of these fantasies and they lost their magic. I learnt that fairies don’t exist and they certainly don’t live in tree roots. I learnt that animations were made by people drawing them, not in the dusty corners under my bed. Sadly, these realisations meant my world lost a little of its magic and its wonder.
I think that it’s such a shame we lose our belief in magic as we grow older, and that as we learn how the world works, we stop finding joy in the minuscule things around us. We become so used to the sight of pink and purple sunsets or the bloom of new flowers that we never stop to linger on the beauty of the world we live in.
This isn’t to say that we don't stop and admire nature, everyone does when something spectacular happens like a solar eclipse or a particularly pretty sunrise. But we don’t find magic in the mundane anymore. The appearance of stars in the sky at the end of the day isn’t something revolutionary like it used to be. People used to believe that stars were the remnants of the Gods, their stories cast into the sky for all to see. In the 14th century, legend says an astronomer was so in awe of the maker of the stars that, out of respect, he used to wear his court robes just to look out of his telescope. To us, however, stars are flaming balls of gas on the edge of our galaxy, something to be explained away by science. The magic and the wonder humanity used to associate with stars are now gone.
But magic, just like love, really is all around. We just need to look for it. Magic can be found in the way our trees turn from green to orange to bare in the span of a few months. Magic can be found in the way sunlight shines through windows casting a halo of light around you. Magic can be found in kindness, in laughter, in love.
Just because we know how something works, just because we’ve seen something a thousand times, doesn’t mean it ceases to become magic. The world around us gives us so much reason for joy that it’s a shame we don’t celebrate it more.
We only ever get as much out of this world as we put into it. If you want to lead a magical life you need to start believing in magic again. I’m not saying go around making houses for fairies, though you’re more than welcome to and I’d happily join in, I’m saying find wonder in the little things, find joy in your everyday. After all, if you don’t believe in miracles, you don’t count as a realist.