Where Does the Magic Go as We Grow Older? (2020)

Generally agree with the article.

The magic never went away. As I got older though I needed more than a blanket fort to amuse me. As I got older I started building plastic model kits, balsa airplanes ... my mind went to imaging them as real, full-size.

Older still and I could afford a computer and, let me tell you, writing software that could amuse me, the coming of the BBS, and later the internet ... I had ascended well past the plane of blanket-fort.

Material means to buy these cooler "adult" toys ... and perhaps a slightly less fertile imagination that could allow a blanket to stand in.

Having kids was indeed a catalyst for me to build MAME machines, a dance pad (for the kids you know)... I enjoyed cracking open and reading each night Lang's colored Fairy Tale books to my three daughters, all with "eager eye and willing ear"....

As I have become older still (saw the birds leave the nest) and retired — I have wondered a bit about why a sheet of typing paper folded into a paper airplane had as much appeal as it did when I was young. I think the kind of poverty of youth (my single, working-mom, a secretary, sneaking home the paper for me) forced a kind of creativity on me. We all made do with what was around the house.

I'm not sure then, as I say, that the magic has gone ... as I say, I just have the means now to large radio-controlled planes if I desire.

Like the fairy tales though, when I was younger I had hoped there was a Wonderland, somewhere, perhaps just behind a tree. It was in fact almost painful for me to fill my daughter's heads with fair tales when they were young. I knew on one hand how important they had been to my own imagination at their age even if I knew they were going to be in for a bit of a let-down.

My own final let down might have culminated when I was college-age actually. I remember seeing for the first time the "Walking Distance" episode of the original "Twilight Zone" and feeling my soul being shredded. But like the character in the episode, somehow I was able to find merry-go-rounds in the adult world.

There is magic out there, I found. It's in people, places I have not yet met or been to. And so too I hope I have also instilled a desire to travel and explore for my daughters.

I don’t think it goes away; it just gets bigger. That being said, what probably kills the joy and fun in anything is monetization, and the internet is a clear example of that. Kids don’t care much about money, so fun is done for pure enjoyment. Adults' fun is ruined by money, greed, status, optics, and other factors. If you try to have pure fun as an adult, you are either seen as childish (and consequently not taken seriously when needed) or advised to turn such a fun hobby into a job or side hustle, eventually ruining the fun part of it.

Magic comes not from building forts and tunnels to feel safe.

Magic comes from applying our creativity with real world objects and artistic and literary means to enrich the lives of ourselves and others, our equals, and of course, that little child who is mystified by everyday things.

We can be mystified by the cosmos, by little miracles we work every day helping others, and seeing everything unfold from some great mystic/scientific laws.

Joseph Conrad put it beautifully:

     To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile — such is the aim, difficult and evanescent, and reserved only for a very few to achieve. But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished — behold! — all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile — and the return to an eternal rest.

For me, I think it has to do with ..just having done more, experienced more.

When I built blanket forts as a child it was something new, my first attempt at building something. It was exiting to figure out how to do it, and enjoy the end product. After a few of those it became a bit more usual, and I started doing other things - play with model cars, build lego sets, etc.

I recently tried welding and I felt that same tinge of excitement - I'm gluing metal together! It's basically magic, I'm taking separate parts and turning them into one. I'm not welding purposefully or to build something, I just really like the act of welding.

Welding was new to me, I never experienced it. I think as a child I everything was new to me, the way welding is. I approached the world with a curiosity that drove me to play with it, to figure it out.

But now I've figured a lot of it out. It's not as fun to play with anymore, because I've exhausted all the angles of play I could come up with (and I did that a long time ago).

I still find that curiosity that drives me to play with something, to figure it out - but I have to look for it, find aspects of life I haven't experienced yet.

When I was a child I had a mild case of synesthesia. I would often see colors or feel textures when hearing sounds. Touching different textures would trigger memories associated with the sound-texture pair... A wild trip for an adult, but at that time I thought everybody perceived the world that way.

I have also had a feeling for Magic. An unmistakable tingling, in my brain, when I learned/discovered something new. It was the best feeling in the world - it kept me exploring and learning the unknown.

All of that started getting weaker somewhere in my teens. Then it completely disappeared when I was around 20. I still hold the memories, the codex of sound/color/textures, but nothing triggers it. Nothing triggers the Magic sense. It all just faded away.

I would do anything to feel it again.

The thing is, children have magical thinking in their playing, a blanket fort for example is full of possibilites and it feels like anything could happen — as we grow older we learn more and more that the number of things happening is limited.

That does not mean adults can have similar amazement, it just goes elsewhere.

I think your awareness shrinks. (And by awareness I mean attention. What you direct when you pay attention. What you concentrate when you concentrate. What gets jerked around when you are distracted).

You spend your whole life focusing on the important stuff / ignoring the unimportant stuff.

In this way you slowly whittle your reality down to a nub.

Also, much that was half-visible or vaguely-visible or almost-invisible gets discarded this way. That's a lot of reality.

Also, the "important stuff", in our society, tends to be mental stuff. Important ideas and plans and such. So by the time you're an adult you've discarded pretty much your whole reality except for a little mental videogame that you play until you die.

So it makes sense that an adult might suffer from reality starvation.

I suspect that at age 8, merely draping a blanket over a coffee table (or a riding a magic dragon named Puff) is no longer as convincing a fantasy of Camelot as it was at age 3. Such fancies don't necessarily die off at some sell-by age; they evolve.

Video games and RPGs inherit that mantle for most (boys esp). Many turn to reading and writing fiction and watching films. Book reading is alive and well, the vast majority of which sustain what the OP suggests has been lost: the love of fiction, fantasy, and romance.

No, fantasy does not end with childhood. It transmogrifies to serve newfound passions that, hopefully, can still resonate forever with your meaning of life.

the magic is very much right where it always is,its everywhere and in everything but never the same twice, so pattern recognition shows you other things instead, simpler things that are just the infill in an otherwise very busy and energetic world, its too much for most and they grow out of the pre verbal ,pan optic stage that marks all humans in some way

I personaly, have never stoped building stuff, there is no break from snow forts to living in vans and buses, I have a house, but I camp in it, I had to trick the power company into taking there wires off it, but hey ,I knew I didnt need it, because light comes down out of the sky and then something something ,photovoltaic and I can charge my phone and make food cold or hot

It’s gone once you’ve done it and know how the magic works

It goes to the cost of living.

WTF?! Seriously...

It doesn't sound like the individual writing this article has actually grown at all.

Why are the millennial generations so lost in make believe?

The reason the "majic" went away, is because it never existed! It was a figment of your childhood imagination.

The real failure of those lost in make believe is that actual reality is about a billion times more enganging and offers about a trillion times the opportunity to see expanded horizons. But wasn't the huffulump so much better? 8-/

But the photo at the beginning tells it all: modern kiddults want a realaity as complex as green eggs and ham.

No wonder we're fucked...