The final guest post for October is Rebecca Hamilton. She is author of one of my favorite reads of 2012 The Forever Girl, as well as Her Sweetest Darkness.
I am so happy to welcome her here today! Her books pack some awesome magic.
What Magic Means to Me
I’m not a religious person, but I think somewhere in me I believe in my own kind of magic. The magic of suggestion, of wishful thinking, of believing, of wanting something so much that fate ends up giving it to you because it would be too great a tragedy for that dream to go unfulfilled. Of course, I know it doesn’t always work that way, and that’s why we call those great moments in life “miracles”.
I think most people believe in some kind of magic at some point in their life. I’m a bit surprised by my own beliefs sometimes, as I was raised already knowing that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were NOT real. You know, because my mom didn’t want to lie or keep secrets from me. Of course, I’ve come to realize life is rarely so simple, but that doesn’t change my belief in magic.
Though, for all the admonishing of such fantasies as bunnies with eggs full of candy and fat men in red suits who plop down the chimney you don’t own, my mom did have a few magic moments of her that she shared with me. She told me once about the time she flew. She ran across the field in front of my Grandma’s house every day with her arms spread and believed she could fly until one day her feet lifted off the ground and she ran through the air too long to call it a leap.
I won’t tell you how I spent my free time for months after that, but I’m sure you can guess. Yet, although I never did fly, I think there was some magic to be found in those moments as well. I’ve always had magic in my imagination. Magic that I believed was possible. Maybe that is what inspires my writing, too. Even when I write fantasy, my mind yearns for the idea that all of it could be somehow possible. That magic can be real. And I think in many ways it is.
So maybe the unicorns of my youth will never really show up. Maybe I’ll never be able to move objects with my mind or magically change my eye color. Maybe there are no secret crystals or amulets that will take me to another world or make me able see faeries. Maybe no amount of “believing” can make magic tangible thing, at least not all of the time. But sometimes magic brushes by you, touches your life in a way you can’t deny, and in that moment magic is real for you. And maybe sometimes all it takes is that magic being alive in your heart and mind.
For me, magic is hope that the impossible can happen. Sometimes just HOPING is magic enough. Sometimes you get a miracle. But I’ll never forget the magic of my youth, when anything was possible, when imagination was magic enough. And I’ll never leave those feelings behind. I’m keeping the magic with me.
What does magic mean to you?
Previously in this series on ‘Magic’:
Monday October 1
Monday October 8
Monday October 15
Stay Tuned for November’s series on Villains
