Good Magic Tricks
How many good magic tricks did you see when you were a kid? How many good magicians did you see when you were a kid? Probably more than you have lately, right? What has changed about magic then that we don’t derive the same enjoyment from it? What makes us to look at a magician and think that he is merely trying to con us, that there is something vastly explainable behind his magic tricks?
The answer is simple really. We are no longer the naïve little boy or girl who could be wowed by a coin being produced magically from behind our ear, or having a plastic flower pop up from nowhere.
Almost to the last man, woman and yes, sadly even nowadays, the child of us, we are a jaded and cynical lot. The essence and the joy of seeing good magic tricks performed right in front of our eyes has vanished. Instead these days, we look to be hustled and played, because we certainly don’t want to look like a fool when push comes to shove.
The sad, simple truth however, is that we have forgotten how to dream. We have lost ourselves in the great morass that is our daily lives, we have left behind innocent pleasures almost for good, and we have lost the ability to feel humility.
We don’t want to fail and therefore we are not prepared to deal with it; we don’t want to look a fool, so instead we regard everything with suspicion; and we don’t want to dream, because sometimes it’s just too hard to dream and have our dreams come tumbling down around our ears.
This is the sad reality which we face today, and this is the sad reality that our children will face, unless we take steps now not to crush their own dreams and hopes, not to squelch the goodness out of them by showing them that to be suspicious of anything and everyone is good.
And the best place to start is at a magic show. As adults we know that there is some sleight of hand involved, or something along those lines, but if we try hard enough, we can still enjoy ourselves. We don’t need to believe that the magic is really…magic; we don’t need to believe that a rabbit popped out of the hat unaided by nature.
We can instead, sit back, and prepare to enjoy a slew of good magic tricks which will boggle our minds as we try to figure out how it was done. We just don’t necessarily have to get hung up on that subject though! And most of all, we can sit back and enjoy as our children experience the same wonder that we did when we were young, before we became jaded and world weary.