It’s all f*ng magic.

The other night, I rode my bike home in the dark from the local pizza joint with my 11-yr. old son, Xander.?

And half way home, Xander, who was in the lead, said, “Dad, look at the moon!”?

I looked up and there it was, half lit up, glowing yellow, the other half charcoal gray, just a shade lighter than the night sky. And I had one of those stream of consciousness flood of emotions (I may have had a couple of beers) that went something like this:

Oh my god, my life is so beautiful, I love my children, my wife, my mom, my father, my brother, my hands are freezing, my face is freezing, only one handbrake on this bike works, and we have to get across four lanes of traffic and Xander be careful! but holy shit look at the moon! what the f*k is that thing anyway? a giant ball made of rock floating in space, lit up by the sun, a giant ball made of fire, also floating in space, which Xander and I can’t see right now because it’s on the other side of the giant ball we’re on, also made of rock, and floating in space, and it’s all strung together with invisible wire called gravity which keeps me and Xander from floating into outer space, and should also make our bikes fall over, but it won’t as long as we keep pedaling, which we will, because our dads taught us how to ride bikes, because they loved us. And it’s all f*ng magic.

All of it.?

The whole f*ng thing.?

I have read that anxiety, depression and loneliness are at an all time high. Not sure what the benchmark is. We don’t have online survey results from 1352 when the Bubonic Plague was booming. But that’s the irony. We have so much to be thankful for but we’re all stressed out all the time. They promised us jetpacks but instead we got late night revenge bedtime doom scrolling.?

I heard G.S. Bhogal say we’re like moths, who over millions of years evolved to navigate by moonlight but now are drawn to street lights. Humans evolved to be tribal, but now we have iPhones and Instagram and Tik Tok, and just like the moths, we’re f*d up too.?

I freely confess Tik Tok has me hooked. I am sucked in daily by an algorithm entirely beyond my comprehension. We think we’re so smart. We tell ourselves we don’t believe in things we can’t see. But we are ruled entirely by invisible forces. Gravity. Time. Light. Love. Peer pressure. Music.?

I remember singing Christmas carols in front of a house belonging to neighbors whose little girl was terminally ill. Thirty of us gathered on their lawn and the couple just stood in the doorway, holding their daughter, and listened. I remember that sound in the night, how we all knew the songs, and how the high school choir director bravely and beautifully led us in that impossible task, what could we do, what could anybody do for those heartbroken people, except sing in the darkness.?

Einstein said everything we know and see, a bug, a star, a human being, a vegetable, cosmic dust, we all dance to the same mysterious tune played in the distance by an invisible piper. He said that if you look at nature, and you study it carefully, and you’re lucky, you can catch a glimpse of something deeply hidden.?

That’s what happened to me on the way from the pizza place. I never would have seen the moon unless Xander pointed it out. A giant space rock in the sky hiding in plain sight from me, because my head was in the past / future (stress / anxiety), not the present. Xander saw the moon because he was in the moment, which kids are better at. And at his cheerful urging, I had my beer-assisted, near-religious experience. I caught a glimpse of it.??

I do not believe in the immaculate conception, per se. But if you, like me, believe in The Big Bang, I will argue, we most certainly do believe in another kind of immaculate conception. If all life spontaneously erupted from absolutely nothing, what could possibly be more immaculate??Einstein said he could see a pattern, but he couldn’t picture the maker. He could see a clock, but he couldn’t envision the clockmaker.

That’s the beauty of Christmas for adults. We get to be the clockmaker. Sure, it’s the gifts, but more than that, it’s the lengths we go to to keep the whole thing a secret. The white lies, the late night capers, the distractions in order to smuggle things into the house in broad daylight, all the various hiding places (they’ll never look here!). It’s not the fat stack of presents under the tree on Christmas morning. It’s all the things we did the kids will never see.?Like Penn Jillete said, the only secret to magic is I'm willing to put way more into this trick than you think it's worth.

On Christmas eve of 2010, I built a Ludwig junior drum kit under the influence. A friend of mine (a drummer) helped me do it and we got to drinking bourbon and by the time we were done, we’d finished most of a fifth of Jack Daniels. I was Santa in the snow storm, a shitfaced clockmaker. Somehow, I pulled it off. On Christmas morning, in the eyes of my eldest son, the drum set’s appearance was a miracle. I would agree.

Whether or not you do Christmas, I wish you a merry one. Ride a bike. Eat a pizza. Look up at the ball made of rock lit up by the ball made of fire. Hug the people you love with your invisible love. It’s all f*ng magic.?