How To: Embrace Life's Real Magic
What a classic children's series taught me about the modern world
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation.”
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
I grew up reading The Chronicles of Narnia, and continue to re-read this fabulous 7-book series every few years as an adult.
Every time I return to Narnia, I learn something new and re-learn something I need reminding of. The many lessons I’ve taken from these beautiful stories include:
How important it is to remain childlike in the face of the world’s nihilism.
The power of taking the leap of action vs. overthinking to the point of paralysis.
The power of a well-developed imagination and sense of creativity.
The untold power of “Deeper Magic.”
Today, I want to talk about Deeper Magic.
In The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Aslan claims “Deeper Magic” is the reason he is able to resurrect when the White Witch kills him.
(Spoilers, if you haven’t read this book yet, it’s a whole Christian metaphor).
Deeper Magic is something mysterious that has been in Narnia since its creation, protecting and nurturing.
Turns out, we have something exactly like that in our world today!
There’s magic between us all
If there wasn’t magic binding us together, we would have died off a long time ago.
There’s something primal, woven into the fabric of life, that guides the world even when we’ve gone astray.
We cooperate and build things without being told.
As early humans, we set ourselves apart by our ability to cooperate and communicate using our minds, our greatest strength. When we were first starting out as a species, cooperation was the most important thing in the world.
Without it, the harsh world around us would have killed us off.
We wouldn’t have been able to raise our young into adulthood.
Nobody was striking out on their own, trying to “find themselves” as an individual so they could laugh from the top of the mountain at those who hadn’t. They needed their tribe!
This is why banishment used to be a punishment, even though it feels laughable to us now (personally, I think we should bring it back, just for the comic relief of banishing people from modern cities for littering).
It’s a silly idea now. “You’re going to banish me from San Francisco? I’ll just go live in Portland!” You won’t be eaten by wolves on the way.
Back when we had to cooperate, however, banishment meant almost certain death. You didn’t have your tribe to protect you.
You also didn’t have time to sit around wondering if you were happy, thereby reminding yourself that you weren’t. The needs of the tribe took precedence over the needs of the individual.
That’s Deeper Magic.
Whenever two human beings cooperate instead of doing something selfish, they are being guided by something deeply primal that’s been there since the earliest humans stepped out of the caves.
Nothing would exist without human cooperation
After we came out of the caves, we started discovering bigger and better ways of agriculture that helped us start building bigger and better cities.
Eventually, there was a resource surplus. Fast forward a few thousand years to the rich world, and we are running around at the second or third level of Maslow’s hierarchy, with our basic needs met, totally miserable.
Why? Because we’ve stopped looking to our community for love and belonging and started looking to ourselves, creating impossible-to-fulfill challenges.
We are SO beyond privileged past anyone in human history to even have the concept of self-help.
But it’s flawed.
When we aren’t happy, we look at ourselves. When we have crises, we think that strength means finding our way out of the dark by ourselves.
This is against the Deeper Magic of the world. We are cooperative animals whose strength lives and dies in our ability to work together.
On an instinctual level, we know this. Science backs it up. When 99th percentile happy people are surveyed, they’re not working out more, eating healthier, or making more money.
They are spending more time with people in their communities (This includes introverts, though introverts tend to prefer time spent with their ride-or-die loyal friends).
This is the reason why married people and religious people live longer. It’s why countries like Colombia and Thailand rank higher on the world happiness index than the US.
Now, I’m not saying to rush out and get married, join a cult, or move out of the country (Though one of those certainly does appeal to me).
I’m saying that a glut of resources creates individuality, individuality creates loneliness, and loneliness is terrible for you.
The more you are able to think of yourself as part of a whole and not as an island, the happier you’ll be.
This is not something I made up, nor is it a new idea. Just ask the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, or Mahatma Gandhi.
Thinking of yourself as an individual whose entire ability to succeed or fail is on you is a recipe for self-loathing.
Just spending time around good, affirming, energizing people releases a cocktail of positive brain chemicals. Belonging to something bigger than yourself is life-saving.
On an instinctual level, we know this. It’s Deeper Magic.
Yet, in the rich world, we are living in a loneliness epidemic.
How could we not be?! Electronic gadgets are demanding our attention, news outlets are farming our outrage to take our money, and we’re taught to be afraid of everyone who doesn’t agree with us and treat them as sub-human.
We believe that success is an island, and the people who have succeeded have somehow magically done it on their own.
We worship those who are “self-made,” and then we turn around and think we can succeed by isolating ourselves and mistrusting our neighbors, using and discarding them on our way to the top.
We need Deeper Magic now more than ever. This is the time to love our neighbors, especially those we disagree with.
For my fellow countrymen, remember that there’s an election coming up. Things are about to get very ugly.
Again.
We are more divided and polarized now than we’ve ever been, and we are acting like pouty, tantrum-throwing children sitting on opposite sides of a room.
But what unites us is, and has always been, stronger than what divides us.
Deeper Magic tells us that we belong together. The modern world tells us that we belong apart. Which life do you want to live? The choice is yours but choose wisely.
The modern world doesn’t want you to be happy. Deeper Magic does.
Excellent article! I'm sending this link to friends :)
Great message, thank you. Exactly what I needed this week. I forgot how much loneliness can make you sad. As a busy introvert my instinct is to retreat to recharge and then I wonder why I'm still unhappy. What I really need is my tribe.