Joyful: The surprising power of ordinary things to create extraordinary happiness

By the time we are adults, we are expected to keep both feet firmly planted in the rational world and to leave magic behind entirely.

Everywhere, it seems, rainbows are joyful. I began to make a list of things like this, ones that I heard over and over again: beach balls and fireworks, swimming pools and treehouses, hot-air balloons and googly eyes and ice-cream sundaes with colorful sprinkles.

Annie Dillard writes that as a child she used to love to hide pennies along the sidewalk for strangers to find,

The poet Mary Oliver writes, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

Yet what I learned in Iceland is that scientific knowledge doesn’t always preclude magical interpretation. Even if we understand the logic behind the magnetic disturbance of the aurora or the geothermal cauldron of the hot springs, encountering them in certain circumstances can open a gap between our cognitive understanding and the sensory reality

Under the right conditions, even ordinary experiences can be infused with a sense of the supernatural. The milky rays of sunlight that beam through a storm cloud, an early morning encounter with a wild animal, or a spiral of dry leaves blown into the air by a gust of autumn wind: such fleeting glimpses of beauty are often interpreted as signs of de

These hills and valleys of light attract our eyes to points of interest within a space,

At the end of the week, look for patterns.

With few exceptions, magic in modern culture appears as either juvenile and primitive or dark and occultist. A bright, benevolent, mature aesthetic of magic is missing from our adult lives.