The Magicians

He was an an­i­mal. His job was to turn bugs and plants in­to mus­cle and fat and feath­ers and flight and miles logged.

The trick was just not wanting anything. That was power. That was courage: the courage not to love anyone or hope for anything.

He could have eked out his sad wasted life with movies and books and masturbation and alcohol like everybody else.

“We human beings are unhappy all the time. We hate ourselves and we hate each other and sometimes we wish You or Whoever had never created us or this shit-ass world or any other shit-ass world. Do You realize that? So next time You might think about not doing such a half-assed job.”

If you will, for just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else. It’s here, and you’d better decide to enjoy it or you’re going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever

This was the place. He would be picked up, cleaned off, and made to feel safe and happy and whole again here.

It was a relief to see that he could still admit that he cared about something.

“You don’t just go on fun adventures for good causes and have happy endings. You’re not going to be a character in a story, there’s nobody arranging everything for you. The real world just doesn’t work like that.”

They weren’t wasted years exactly, he could never say that, but they were years in which, in spite of all his amazing gifts, he’d been conscious of somehow not quite getting the gift he wanted. Enough to get by on, maybe. Sure. But this, this was everything. Now the present had a purpose, and the future had a purpose, and even the past, their whole lives, retroactively, had meaning. Now they knew what it was for.

He wondered what they could possibly have in their uncharmed lives that made them think they were worth living.