Embrace Enchantment
When my daughters were much smaller, they believed in magic and in fairies. 🧚♀️
Now, my children stress over money, jobs, and college. My oldest worries about her senior thesis not being original enough and all the criticism she will get in her final review. I get texts from my youngest in college who is upset about exams, and her text this morning said: "mom could you please send me my vitamins, meds, and socks, I forgot it all at home and I only have two pairs of socks and my feet are dying–HELP!!!"
Part of me understands that these feelings are what it means to grow up. Life can be stressful and we learn to manage those stressors, that is what being an adult is all about. But I am also a little sad that those magical loving children have changed. How many of us have lost a bit of that childhood wonder and magic. Is it possible to find the magic again?
When you were a child, did you get lost in a timeless space of playing outside or building imaginary lands?
Did the world seem filled with wonder?
When did that change and why do we let that happen?
When I wake up in the morning, I dash right into all the things that I need to focus on as a kind of distraction from the mess of the world. But the world needs us to show up and use our voices and creativity with a sense of inspiration and joy, not obligation and drudgery.
I am very interested in how the little things we do each day nourish our sense of magic, purpose, and meaning. ✨
Lately, I have been trying to find more ways to pause.
My morning meditation practice and yoga practices are great tools, and you know I encourage those practices! But I think that finding the tiny ways to dance with enchantment is most effective in helping me to feel more purpose and meaning..
Enchantment can be defined as: "a feeling of great pleasure and delight," and even "the feeling of being under a spell; magic."
I have shared this before, but I think it needs repeating.
One of my favorite authors, Sharon Blackie, defines enchantment as unlocking the magic of every day. She says to live an enchanted life involves holding space each day for awareness of mystery, embodiment, and creativity. She offers several tools for cultivating a life of enchantment in her book The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday.
Seven steps for living an enchanted life:
Believe that everything around you is alive. Tell stories to stones, sing to the trees, talk to the birds. Recognize that the world is animate and mysterious.
Be fully in your body. Get out of your head. Move, dance, tap your feet, snap your fingers. Feel into your bones.
Embrace mystery. Don't be afraid of what you don't know, and don't assume you know.
Slow down. Pause and look at what is around you with the eyes of a two-year-old.
Create something. Keep a journal, write words, glue pictures. Simple creativity is the best way to stay enchanted.
Foster meaning through tiny daily rituals: light a candle at the same time each day, use some oils or special lotions when you bathe, say a special quote to yourself or read passages out of a treasured book each day, or look for the moon each night.
Don't have a career, have a life. Find your calling and joy in your offerings to the world. Dive into your sense of purpose and meaning.
Enchantment has nothing to do with fantasy thinking or escaping from the real world. It is a vivid sense of belonging in a richly layered world. In living an enchanted life, every moment offers tiny opportunities for finding wonder in the very location and the very moment in which you find yourself. Enjoy the way the light shines through the window, notice how the steam rises off your cup of coffee or tea. Listen to the call of the crow from a space of complete wonder and mystery.
Maybe if we seek these tiny enchanted moments, those silver sparkles will pull us through the grey clouds.
By Angie Follensbee-Hall
