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The Story You Tell Yourself about the World

Nate Staniforth, from "From Stage Tricks to Real Magic: A Magician's Search for Wonder," To the Best of Our Knowledge:

“A magician shares the experience of wonder. Everything else is just wrapping paper.

If you just sit down for five minutes and really look at the reality that there is something rather than nothing and that we are here to be a part of it. That is so deeply mysterious that I can't even begin to wrap my mind around it.

But it's impossible to live a life constantly in awe of the fact of your own existence. Just our of practical necessity we have to get used to things.

But the danger is that we construct this small more manageable world just so we can navigate it. At least for me, the temptation is to fall into the belief that that's the real thing.

It’s easier to live in the story you tell yourself about the world rather than the world itself.

Magic for me is that sense of suddenly and unexpectedly discovering that the universe, the world, and the human heart are far bigger and more mysterious than you had come to believe."


Staniforth, N. (2018). Here is real magic: A magician's search for wonder in the modern world. New York: Bloomsbury. (author, library)