The Magical Moment
I was just reading on Facebook about the reaction a friend’s son had to learning that Santa Claus wasn’t real.
I felt my stomach twist, and my lips curl into a disappointed frown.
“Ugh.”
You see, I am a firm believer in magic. Not the David Blaine kind of illusion, or the Wiccan wilderness, but in the real, truthful magical moment.
I think it’s why I am an entrepreneur. Seeing that moment when the dream become reality because a team of engineers strung letters and numbers to make that magical box output a beautifully designed web service that betters millions of lives in just a small magical way.
When we were first pitching Graphicly, when asked about the tech, we would say, “it’s magic,” and by the time we were done explaining it, the investor seemed to believe us. “Magical.” they would whisper under their breath as we left the offices.
Magic, the thing that cannot exist because we are logical and believe in science, is emotional. It’s often filled with wonder and passion, and that is something that we cannot replicate with logic and science, and the greatest inventions and services in the world are embrued with magically properties. Flip a switch and light appears. Magic. Press a button and shit shows up at your house. Magic. Press another button and movies play on your phone, then your tv. Magic.
I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs and I often spend time talking about the magical properties of what they are building. There are so few that are truly in love with the magic of what they are building. They don’t want to build 100 year companies because they are blind to the potential economic positives of an earlier exit. They want to build a company with longevity because the pull of doing magically things follow up by simply more magic is just such a drug that it’s impossible to not pursue it.
We spend our lives surrounded by burden. People, responsibilities, and health among others, that we begin to see the magic in our lives equally as burdensome.
Take a moment. A magical moment.
And enjoy it.