The magic is in today

​I've discovered something. The more time I spend thinking about how beautiful I wish the world would be, the more I don't notice just how beautiful the world already is.

Wishes and dreams - I think they're good. I think it's good to believe in the magic that takes today and turns it in to a beautiful tomorrow. It's good, that is, until we start missing out on the magic that's in today.

Sometimes, the absence of beauty in our lives isn't because we haven't yet crossed paths with it - sometimes it's because we just haven't noticed it.

I told a friend yesterday that my life changed when I had my first kid. For a moment, life stood still. When you're a dad looking into the eyes of a baby - YOUR baby - there is no more wishing and dreaming the world away.

Your world is right there. That baby can't afford you to be anywhere else. A dad living in the world of someday isn't much good to a baby needing someone in this day.

The world didn't stay stopped, for sure. But it forever slowed down.

It's funny the things you start noticing when you look at the world as the world your kid is living in and not the world YOU are living in.

There's the flower you walked by a thousand times and never noticed it - suddenly, you can't wait to show it to your kid.

How often did I take throwing a ball for granted until it became something I could teach my kid to do?

How many smiles did I miss on people's faces when they weren't faces smiling at my goofy kid?

I have two babies now. Babies turned to boys. Boys racing off into their own tomorrows - often at the expense of missing out on their todays.

It's what kids do.

I like to think in some ways, though, they've left me back here. Back here in today. Yelling out to them, hey boys, don't miss this.

I stay back here hoping they too will one day make the discovery I have - hopefully long before I did - that this world is full of magic.

And so much of the magic is not out there - it's not someday. It's today. It's here.

The real magic is in discovering we have the power to stop the world and see it. Sure, the world is easier to stop when you're looking into the eyes of a new baby. But it can stop outside of that gaze.

The world can stop when we walk out the front door. And look up. And see the beauty in a sky that's only served as the covering for our wishing and dreaming.

In the looking up, there is magic.

In the looking up, a reminder that magic is everywhere.