Faith, Trust & Pixie Dust

How do you adequately describe the first time you experience real magic? It seems the prettiest of words in the English language could never quite do it justice.

There is a feeling that you get when you're a child, that as an adult, replays in your memory as though you are viewing it through a viewfinder. You can see yourself, nestled between the sheets, surrounded by your mountain of stuffed toys, sitting somewhere between sleep and awake as you take in the words of your favourite story.

Then it happens—magic. The exact moment when you transition from matching words with pictures on a page to being sucked in as an active participant in the story through the sheer power of your vivid imagination.

“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.”

You realise for the very first time what you are capable of. You live there, in the confines of your mind. Unbothered by the lack of tangible things or toys to occupy your time. Who needs toys when you can fly?

You think your happy thoughts as you sail past the second star to the right, straight on 'til morning. You bounce on clouds, dodging cannon fire. You dance with fairies and duel with pirates.... You are fearless, you are cunning, you are clever, and you are certain that there could be nothing worse than ever having to grow up.

But time is chasing you, a ticking crocodile looming ever closer. You start to lose the magic, and the happy thoughts are much harder to come by as your body grows and your mind is polluted by the outside world. Then one day, before you ever saw it coming, you realise that you've forgotten how to fly.

“In time they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.”

You drift through the in-between years, no longer little yet not quite grown, in a state of acceptance. After all, magic isn't real, and we must all grow up, eventually.

You take your first steps away from adolescence and toward adulthood. Away from the safety of the playground and into the bullpen. And then you see them....

Pirates.

The swashbuckling stealers of joy. Those who let go of their happy thoughts and lost their magic all too willingly. You recognise it in their scowls and their discontent with the world. You see them stabbing each other in the back as they race with each other for who will get to the top of the ladder.

“There is a saying in the Neverland that, every time you breathe, a grown-up dies.”

It's at that moment that you realise you might have forgotten how to fly, but you never stopped believing that you could. Growing up is only a state of mind, and you are determined never to let your vivid imagination fall to piracy.

You race home and dig it out. Your buried treasure, almost lost. You nestle yourself between the sheets of your much bigger bed, and you cuddle that soft toy that saw you through every storm, nightmare and restless night. You open the cover and run your fingers down the spine, and you take a deep breath as the worn smell of the pages floods your senses. You remind yourself that time and age may dictate that you are an adult, but you are anything but a grown-up. You promise never again to forget your favourite bedtime story, and you begin....

"All children, except one, grow up."

All quotes throughout are extracted from Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie.