An Enchanted Life
Wednesday, January 22, 2025 10:55 AM
“An enchanted life has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed by beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place, or a person.” (Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, p. ix)
Thomas Moore is perhaps best known for being the best-selling author of the book, Care of the Soul. While this book is an amazing read, and one I highly recommend as a primer on how to add meaning and depth to daily life, it is another of his many books that drew my attention many years ago, and continues to guide my engagement with the world around me. The book? The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life.
The idea of living an enchanted life, of opening oneself to the wonder that surrounds us, is a gift waiting to be given. To receive this gift, we need only be fully present and allow ourselves to be touched by the beauty or wonder or mystery that is always there, waiting.
Wait – “only be fully present?” I know, I know – this is often easier said than done, but enchantment awaits for those that practice this necessary approach. You did notice that I said “practice,” right? No one is fully present one hundred percent of the time—it something we all work towards getting better at, and the more we practice the more often we find ourselves falling under the spell of beauty and wonder and possibilities.
Katherine May shares in her book Enchantment: awakening wonder in an anxious age, enchantment comes from “a deep engagement with the world around me, the particular quality of experience that accompanies close attention, the sense of contact that emerges from noticing” (p. 13). So how do we create these moments of deep engagement, these opportunities to be inspired by what we see or hear or smell or touch or taste? There’s a good clue right there: to begin, slow down and pay attention to what your senses share with you, to the beauty hidden right in front of you at this very moment. While this isn’t always possible, I believe slowing down is an option more often than we might think.
For instance, right now – I have a choice: I can continue to write about enchantment, or I can stop typing and pause for a moment. I choose to pause, to pull my eyes away from the screen (and truthfully, from the keyboard – my typing skills are good but not great). I get up from my chair and look out the window, focusing on the scene in front of me. Snow covers the ground, and birds flock to the feeders. I see a flash of red and then soft grey with a bright orange beak as a pair of cardinals come in search of sunflower seeds. A flock of juncos dot the ground with charcoal, scratching as they look for seeds. More red, as I notice both a flicker and a downy woodpecker enjoying the suet cakes.
As I watch, I wonder—imagining into the tiny fluffs of life that dart back and forth between feeders and trees, marveling at their resilience. And just like that, I am enchanted—quieted and refreshed and energized by the wonder of nature that is before me.
It is not just nature that invites an encounter with enchantment: there are many moments in our lives that offer us “the chance to merge into the wild drift of the world, to feel overcome, to enter into its weft so completely that sometimes I can forget myself” (Katherine May, Enchantment: awakening wonder in an anxious age, p. 14). I have been drawn into the beauty of life as I snuggled my infant granddaughter, felt my imagination become electrified as I read a book that tugged at the corners of my mind, and savored the wonder of the moment when I’ve closed my eyes and sipped an almost magical rooibos chai tea.
The moments that make up an enchanted life are offered to us every day—it is up to us to cultivate awareness, to practice opening ourselves to the wonder and beauty and mystery that surrounds us.
Until next time...
Keep Sparkling,
Marta
References
May, Katherine. Enchantment: awakening wonder in an anxious age. Riverhead Books, 2023.
Moore, Thomas. The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life. Harper Collins, 1996.