I am reading this great book about programming the mind for success and positive thinking – and there was a question that really made me think;

“Where do you find your motivation – in achieving goals or in avoiding something you don’t want in your life?”

What an amazing question, so many hidden truths and beliefs can be found in asking it. Am I motivated to DO something or am I trying to run away from something?

All I know is that I don’t want an ordinary life – is that a reason, to become an artist to avoid the same lifestyle as my parents and what I knew as real and ordinary as a child? Or the opposite – am I driven by a constant need to express myself and to affect people with these expressions? I am not sure.

I’ve always wanted to avoid playing by other people’s rules (which is ironic since I’ve both been drawn to and scared of authoritarians) and not wanting the ordinary to dominate my life. I’ve always looked for magic. In everything. Everywhere. I find it in intimacy, in my creativity, imagination, in my fantasies, dreams, during Christmas time and when it’s snowing, raining, in thunder and lightning. I find magic in other people’s hearts, in the core, in growth and awakening, in transformations and transcendence. I find magic in laughing, dancing, singing, smiling, in the twinkle of the eye, in body heat, heartbeats and tears. I find magic in nature and in animals – in music and  artistic expression.

And of course I find magic in love.

Ally McBeal

My need for magic is insatiable. I guess that’s why I can relate to the fictional characters Ally McBeal, Pippi Longstocking and Anne of Green Gables so much. Or why I connect so deeply with the magic worlds of Ingmar Bergman.

The opening sequence of Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Fanny & Alexander’ (1982) and the magical world of Alexander’s imagination

Anne of Green Gables (1986) imagining herself as the Lady of Shalott

I don’t deny reality and I don’t dislike the real world, but I know there’s so much more to it than endless routines, problems and mechanical needs like eating, pooping, sleeping. I do believe in magic even though I don’t believe in any God or an afterlife. That’s why it’s so important for me to bring magic into the world, while I am still alive because I only have one chance of contributing – and it’s now.

We are all made of cosmic materials, stardust and moonlight – we are all part of a great mystery. We need to remind ourselves of that more. We are magic.

I would say that my motivation comes from a combination of being uncomfortable with the ordinary and therefore chasing magic both within and outside the ordinary.