"It isn't really magic sweety, it's just a trick..

 "It isn't really magic sweety, it's just a trick.. it looks like magic but it's simply an outcome of an action or set of actions that I did which you weren't aware of and did not notice".... I told my 7yo, albeit in simpler Gujarati terms so that she could understand easily.

Whenever anyone in the family has a birthday or special day she often loves putting up a show. Be it a quiz show, a dance show or a magic show. They are all innocent attempts at those things as she is too young to execute something like that. At the end she feels happy she put up a show and we get even more happier knowing she is too young to actually perform something like a magic show on her own. We love the efforts she takes to put up a show to entertain us and the whole act is always pretty charming.

So last week on her birthday, the wife picked up a nice magic tricks learning set as a birthday gift. I had promised the kid that I will teach her a few tricks over the weekend. So a while back we opened the set and I read about the first trick and executed it making her the subject. She was absolutely fascinated at the end of the magic trick and we repeated it a few times (and every time she was equally fascinated). That's when finally I started to explain the concept of magic and how magicians use simple tricks (and deceptive talks) to make something appear magical. Over the next few mins I explained the first trick to her and made her practice the trick multiple times so that eventually she could run the trick on her daadi (granny) now.

The experience made me ponder about how we look at so many things around us as magic. Throughout our lives we are in awe of different individuals for different things that they (appear to magically) do or have ( magically ) achieved. Be it as simple as being magical with a skill, being magically fit, knowing the magic of compounding their wealth, knowing the magic of staying happy all the time, knowing the magic of spreading joy with utter ease and some are magical at mentoring others.... yet it probably could be (besides a lot of hard work) simple tricks/steps/habits/behaviors/processes that they learned or developed and practiced over a period of time that led to something which is perceived as magic by the onlookers.

While the professional magicians never reveal their tricks, in our personal and professional lives, I guess all we gotta do is keenly (and with an open mind) observe and learn, or even better, ask those leaders/colleagues/individuals about the underlying steps/efforts/mindset that went into achieving what we or the people around classify as magic.

Now back to trick no. 2 before the wife comes home. I have been given a target to teach 2 tricks today so that she can charm her mom with them once she returns home in a few mins.

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