Total Possibility

So my brother and I were chatting yesterday about this blog, and I was mentioning the different hits I was getting from the search engines, primarily from the search term “smart car” from my blog on an efficient diesel engine the other day.  Just because of “smart cars” I am getting hundreds of hits a day on that particular blog.  So he suggested that I look up the most popular words in the blogosphere (what a dumb word frankly) and the above title is FILLED with the most googled and searched words in regards to blogs.  Well, except monkey and muffin.  Those are MY most searched for terms on the internet.  I am seeking help.

That’s right… Monkey Muffins.  I have ordered 5 cases already.

That having been said, I was intending today to write a little blog about 4th grade.  Because I know people are interested in my 4th grade stories.  I just know they are.  Please be interested…

When I was in 4th grade, I was really into magic- I mean really into it.  I think it all started when my mom took me to see David Copperfield (the illusionist, not the Dickens character) the year that he walked through the Great Wall of China. (Incidentally I had a trick that performed a couple of times in High School that was similar- I could break the Great Chair of Aluminum without batting an eye just by sitting on it). (Not to mention futons)

In this particular show, DC didn’t have a great wall of China to walk through, but he did have a somewhat impressive metal wall that he walked through.  As I recall, the trick took about 20 minutes to perform altogether, but 19 minutes of it was David Copperfield dancing around the wall in a dramatic fashion.  Maybe I was just into dramatic dancing.  No… it was magic.

AllI could think of back then was figuring out how the heck he did that, and how no wall would ever hold me back again.  I can’t tell you how many walls I tried to walk through after that.  I can’t tell you because I eventually passed out from hitting my head on various walls trying to walk through them.  I don’t remember 1985 at all.

Owned by the wall

I even went as far as going to a Magic Society meeting (yes there is such an organization, it just doesn’t exist in Arrested Development). (I often heard Final Countdown playing in my sleep.)

GOB

OK even as much as I was into magic back then, the Magic Society proved to be creepy, even by 4th grade standards.  Sure these guys could make pigeons come out of places where no pigeon should be, but I am pretty sure it warped their brains somehow.  (I remember one creepy guy in particular)  (creepy).  Most of these guys did not have the grace nor the finesse of David Copperfield, although there was a lot of dramatic dancing going on at the meeting I went to.  Maybe I just went to the wrong meeting.

This did not deter me in the least.  Certainly I wasn’t called to join the Magic Society as a 4th grader- these guys spent way too much time doing magic even for me.  I got my first magic kit shortly thereafter- a Harry Blackstone Magic kit.  For those of you who don’t know, Harry Blackstone was the David Copperfield of the 70’s.  He was a great man.  More mysterious than dramatic, I think he was a great magician. (Could have used more dramatic dancing though.)

It appears that he is dancing… dramatically

I spent the next couple of weeks learning the various tricks- making balls disappearing under cups, card tricks, various tricks involving strings (which almost made me lose a finger once by the way) (That is a different blog) (Strings tied to tight can cut off the circulation in a child’s finger I learned one day) (On my own finger)

After a couple of weeks I felt like I was ready to perform.  I had perfected about half the tricks, and thrown in a few dramatic dance moved to boot and I knew it was time.  So I approached my 4th grade teacher Mr. Sunderland, who also let me run a banking business in class (yet another blog) (I made lots of money that year) (For a 4th grader) and I asked him to let me perform.

Perform I did- I don’t know if it was the dramatic dancing, or the quality of magic, but I was able to dazzle the other 4th graders.  As I get older, I realize how easy it is dazzle 4th graders by the way.  A couple of my tricks flubbed up, but for the most part my career as a 4th grade magician was off to a running start.  It was my first and last show.  I did do some card tricks for a waitress at Bob Evans a few weeks after that, but that was the end of my professional career before I found something else, or my banking business took too much of my time.

I think my interest in magic goes right along with a lot of my habits and actions.  In sacraments class back in grad school in Rome, our professor told us the difference between magic and prophecy.  Prophecy in a culture is for the good of the culture and not the prophet, whereas magic is an attempt to control one’s environment- it is somewhat self centered.

Who doesn’t want to control their environment and walk through walls or fly around?  If that sentiment wasn’t shared by a lot of people there wouldn’t be comic book heroes with superpowers, or people like Donald Trump and Martha Stewart.  It is in our nature to try and control our environment however it is possible, and magic seems to do that well.  It seems that David Copperfield can dance through a wall or make the statue of liberty disappear.  It seems like he has total control over his environment when in reality it is all an illusion.

That is about the same when it comes to controlling our own environments- it is an illusion to believe that we have control over most of anything- that attempt to control our feelings or emotions or the actions of our environment of others is simply like magic- an illusion.  There are lots of ways we try to do that by the way that are much more dangerous than magic- work, titles, power, drugs, alcohol, spending- insert your vice here.  None of it gives us any more control over our environment than anything else.  I often wonder, with all their money, how free someone like Donald Trump or Martha Stewart really is.  Maybe they are slaves to their money- I would bet they are.

Realizing how little control we have over things is really liberating.  I can’t control how I feel about things- I can’t control how you feel about things- I can’t change the weather or walk through walls.  What I do have control over however, thanks to the grace of God, are my choices- my actions.  I do have control over that no matter what is going on around me.  I do not believe that we are necessarily determined to act in a particular way because of our environment or upbringing.  I think often that we, myself included, simply choose to go with what is easier or comfortable or what we know thus giving our free will to someone else, or enslaving it to some kind of addiction.  Certainly we are created to be free rational beings capable of entering into good relationships with people of free will.  It is hard to take back our free will because that means maybe ticking someone off, but as I mentioned yesterday, you are probably going to tick someone off anyway, and you can’t please everyone (another issue of control) so you might as well not try. 

The intelligent thing is to cultivate your free will- to learn to discern what is best for you and those around you, what is within your power to do, and to do that thing.  I can’t determine how anyone acts but me, and even then to act completely freely I need the grace of God himself to be the free being he created me to be.