person doing card trick

Reflecting on The Half-Life of Magic

I make it a point to read Seth Godin blog posts every day (well, I try my best). Today, he wrote “The half-life of magic“.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Arthur C. Clarke

In this post, Mr. Godin points out how quickly magic wears off. And, by magic, I ascribe the appreciation and wonder. The rate of change has increased so dramatically that one of our challenges is to find wonder in life.

It is hard when we externalize this. When we’re waiting to find wonder, delight, joy, it becomes so much harder to find. Let me propose another alternative: to actively seek it. Take a moment and consider how amazing our lives our. With my cellphone I can look up almost anything humanity has ever learned. Almost all knowledge is, literally, at our fingertips. but these technological marvels are only a small piece. Look out the window, watch the rain, see the hummingbirds drift amongst the blossoms, or the juncos dark amongst the tree branches. Or the eagle drifting overhead, over this suburban human habitat.

Life is full of wonder if you choose to look for it. And that’s the pathway to a joy-filled life: searching for wonder.