Practical Magic is a 20 year-old movie with N. Kidman and S. Bullock about witches in New England. that for me is a metaphor for getting you mojo back. When you are in a slump, when down and you feel what’s the use, take refuge in your Practical Magic.

Magic means a surprise that doesn’t fit our cause and effect map of reality. Practical means it is useful in our everyday life. You need to create a Practical Magic space of play in your life where the means and the end are One. Something you love doing that has no purpose. When you think there is a purpose, you are going to eventually become exhausted and depleted of energy, and you say what’s the use? I’m not getting anything out of this.

Practical Magin, referring to the movie as metaphor, was that the witches could not deny their nature. Their nature called them and they had to return to. use their magic to get out of a fix. The witches were like witch McGyvers. They used magic potions to get out of a fix.

The other dimension of the movie as I look into it, is the the “witches” were women who could operate of the material world—regardless of what people thought. The “witches” played with reality. Play is practical magic.

And you can play with your reality too. I used today’s talk to model Play real time as my talk. My talks are play. For me there are Practical Magic because I say things that inform me, that surprise me, like a rabbit out of a hat. Wow…where did that come from?

I love movies because they are Practical Magic. I find surprises in them, rabbits pulled out of a hat. Magic for magic is just entertainment that has no use. But Magic that is Practical has an undiscovered use as a side-effect. The Use of Practical Magic is like the unexpected side-effect of drugs, except in a positive way. Practical Magic has unintended side-effects. Life is the unintended side-effect of Practical Magic. Life is the unintended side-effect of play.

If life is the intended side-effect of play….you are not playing. The magic is not practical.