“If what you see is all you see, you’ve probably missed the main act” ~ Imisi

“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous” ~ A. Einstein

We’d typically meet three kinds of people in our journey through life. Prophets, liars and everyday folks like ourselves shuttling haplessly between prophet and liar. Projecting and predicting, despite seeing no further than the cliff of our noses. We are, essentially, attempting to convince everyone else that we know what we’re about. That we have it all down to a science. Prophet when we’re ‘sure’. Liar when we’re not.

Truth is, life can often feel like making one’s way through a fog with nothing but a flickering candle. But, what’s the alternative? A world with complete, constant and universal clarity? A place where everyone knows everything about everything long into the future and can read minds? Ponder that for a minute. Consider what it means for an all-important component of our existence: the capacity for magic. To know without knowing. To feel without proof. To be lost and yet perfectly on track.

They say there’s a formula for magic. That every magic trick – no matter how grand – follows a familiar pattern. First, the ‘pledge’ – where the host hands you a mundane prop for verification. You give it a quick once-over and signal approval (unless you spot something). Confirmation that this seemingly unremarkable item is, in fact, ordinary. Eve just bit the apple. Adam will fall in line.

Next, in a stage called the ‘Turn’, the magician does the extraordinary with the seemingly regular. They could make the item you vouched for disappear. Or, if a person, they could saw them in two. Or, they could even pull a tower out of a flat sheet of paper. The absolutely incredulous!

You, like everyone else, are completely stunned. It simply cannot be! Should you have spent longer inspecting the prop? Did you miss something? You question everything – your senses, your understanding of what’s real or even possible. Is this still a trick – or are we exploring parallel realms now? But don’t worry; that’s the very point of it all.

In fact, your consternation is the perfect introduction for the act’s final stage: the ‘Prestige’. Every magician will tell you how this is, by far, the most complicated part of the sequence. Here, they close the loop and bring back the original item you inspected and verified. Almost as though nothing ever happened. You feel both duped and excited. You’ve been had, but somehow, you’ve loved every bit of it. The rush has now reached a fitting crescendo. Magic!

But what has any of this got to do with you? Well, what if I told you there’s magic doesn’t only happen on stage? That it’s everywhere around us? Is it strange to highlight that we’re already mid-way through the act’s second stage without even knowing? That magic is, in fact, why we see such wild celebrations at the Olympics and why is revenge feels incredibly gratifying? Let’s explore.

Stage 1 – The Pledge: We’re presented with this beautiful specimen called life. But it’s dynamic and chaotic. It feels crowded. There’s a lot of us. Still, we get the sense that we’re relevant. The sound of our voice keeps someone’s world in balance.

That’s comforting – except we also feel lost. We never see too far ahead in this surreal fog. No one does. We crave a crystal ball. But, it’s no good. The future changes every time we look. So, we invent the next best thing: a worldview. It’s not perfect, but with it, random suddenly feels familiar.

The sun shines, the wind blows and seasons change. Suddenly, the world is not so random any more. We know ourselves and quickly establish ‘normal’. We sign off on the prop, and our magician cues the next act.

Stage 2 – The Turn: Life happens as it must. The critical ingredient here is doubt – something we all seem to have more of than we need. We question our abilities. We wonder if we made the right call. How can we trust a process we don’t fully control?

But doubt’s not always a bad thing. Imagine always being so sure. A script without twist. Curve without inflection. To put it simply: without doubt, there’s no excitement. But that’s not why we doubt. We doubt because there’s more outside our control than within. We doubt because it’s human. Because we’re human.

That withdrawn kid may suddenly feel they don’t truly belong with the group. Its imperfect parents may have broken the delicate balance of discipline and nurture. Regardless of how hard they tried to keep the child from the fact of their own struggles, that child – desiring fellowship – grows up wondering if they ever truly belonged. A dose of desire. A dash of doubt.

That wide-eyed teen arrives at university full of drive and ambition. They had given a resounding account of themselves in the build-up. But they wonder if they chose the right course. They’d heard horror stories. Fastidious faculty, perilous process and relentless routine. Will they pull it off? And, if so, what sort of career can they really look forward to? A tower of ambition, but windows of doubt.

They say only 12 in 100,000 talented footballers ever make it to the top. Angel di Maria, mercurial in all his glory, has had as successful a career as any footballer can hope for. But when he reminisces, he notes that his father’s football dreams were cut short by knee injuries. His grandfather’s by a train accident. He also notes that his father was considered a far better footballer than him. And his grandfather, even better than his father.

He was fully aware of how his father and grandfather’s footballing dreams died. Many in the different stadia he graced were too. Lightning already struck twice. It might as well strike again. He kept ‘running into space’, nonetheless. Acres of space with pockets of doubt.

Doubt is highly inconvenient. It keeps us up at night. It makes us over-think, questioning what by all accounts is already granted. But it’s never fully pointless. Without it, we’d miss out on one of the more remarkable parts of life’s tapestry.

Stage 3 – The Prestige: Remember when we said this was the most complicated part of the magician’s set? The real question is why. Short answer: circularity!

It’s never enough for the magician to leave us questioning our senses. They must also close the loop and bring us back to where it all began – where the prop was regular and unremarkable. Otherwise, our focus remains narrow, and we may spend forever in forensic curiosity. Anyone who’s been audited knows just how unnerving such surveillance can be. So, the magician distracts us further, dosing curiosity with exhilaration and ultimately taking away evidence of the trick. The ride ends right where it all begun. Genius, really – and it’s as pertinent on stage as it is off it.

Stages 1 and 2 are ongoing everywhere around us. One just has to look closely enough. But the final stage – what I like to call a point of convergence – is a truly rare thing of beauty.

Not often does one get presented with the past while being so certain of the future. But, standing at a point of convergence, an earlier version of you can see the future with incredible clarity. And, gazing back through symbiotic doubt, you see the very path that led you there. The past becomes the future. The future becomes the past. They merge in time and become you.

A point of convergence is that call from Angel di Maria to his dad after the Copa America finals, with a medal around his neck. It is that confused kid – now grown – finding out after forever that their heritage was never in doubt. It’s parents betraying emotion at the sight of their child graduating or getting married.

But it’s so much more than victory or achievement. Sometimes, it’s simply clarity. Otherworldly clarity. A point where the impossible road you’ve walked becomes unequivocal as to what comes after. A point beyond which you can no longer be lost! A point of convergence is the real-world culmination of the magician’s ultimate trick. Except, now, the prop is you!

You’ve probably assessed your world as notoriously unremarkable. You know everyone’s abilities and how everything works. But, somehow, a mix of circumstances have brought about the truly spectacular. You can’t really explain it, despite having to take credit. But, as though that was not special enough, you simultaneously stumble on a memory, message, person, melody, scent or thing that takes you right back to the story’s very beginning. And, in that moment, you clearly experience both the doubt of endeavour and the calmness of clarity and/or the sweet taste of victory. Doubt is now of no consequence. You know exactly how that story ends.

But life’s phases pass quickly. And our memory is hardly as good as we think. Eventually, that beautiful crescendo will fade. New challenges will surface. And you may be tempted to feel mundane again. You’ll have a choice: accept the evidence of your eyes or stay engaged long enough to watch another display of magic.

As someone who explores stupid for fun, I’ve made my fair share of horrible decisions. I’ve burnt more fingers than I own. But I’ve also learnt a few things. And, now more than ever before, I’m more convinced that the universe is benevolent and tilted in our favour.

I choose to be unshakable in the knowledge that everything works out in the end. And that we, ultimately, will attain whatever we reach for – even long after the passage of time has blurred the correlation of choice and consequence.

Merry Christmas!