November 23, 2010

• A wizard is never late

  Don’t you love when things are magical?  I think that is part of the joy of going to a fancy restaurant.  Your waiter appears out of nowhere, the genie ready to grant your heart’s greatest culinary desires.  “What can I get for you?”  Classic opening genie line.  He is ever the mind-reader, however, and leaves you to your peaceful and relaxing conversation, only to appear when you most need something.  Then some time later the magic sets back into motion as he produces out of thin air the crab ravioli you had told him was your heart’s one true wish. 

  As a little kid many things are magical because you don’t know how they work.  The interesting thing is, not much changes as an adult.  How a car works, how planes fly, how your own body works—these things aren’t really much more understood as we grow up.  It’s still magic. 

  As you read and learn to do a certain job you will become the expert of something and so be the magician, rather than the audience.  And that is good too.  It is good to wonder and it is also good to understand; we must not think we understand too much, however, and we must not simply stay in a state of wonder.  For wonder is the beginning of philosophy; even if it remains in the end, much philosophy should you have done by then.

  Magical things can be big or small.  I remember at work there used to be this one rack of paper towels, and I never saw anyone putting them there.  They were just always there.  I thought that was terrific, because it’s like they were being portaled there from another dimension.  Then eventually they ran out and I found out where we kept them.  It was a sad day, the day the magical paper towels went away.  And yet, there is still so much more.

  For instance, take governments.  How do governments work?  I see lots of people talking about the government, but what are they actually referring to?  The press conferences?  In that case, that’s not how the government actually works.  That’s how the government says they work.  The way the government actually works has to do with what all of them say to each other at all the different times as they go about their days.  That’s a really hard thing to track, unless you are watching The West Wing.  Even if you are one of the top officials in the government, you have to be very introspectively in tune to know how you make your own decisions.  So maybe no one knows how it works. 

  It’s a good thing when we don’t know things, because being magical makes things more exciting. 

  • 12:43 pm
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