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Since I can’t get into your head directly, I found a different way of doing this. Things that don’t easily make sense disturb your thinking. So that’s what I do—give you ideas or experiences that defy simple explanation.

Why do I want to disturb your thinking? I’m not gonna tell you—yet. Not knowing will mess with your head and force you to try to make up an explanation.

You will be required to use your imagination. Ha!

While you are shifting uncomfortably, let me introduce myself.

I’m Rocco, a retired magician. I’m getting old and pretty soon I will disappear, but I’ve got a few final tricks to pull off. Professional integrity would normally prevent me from revealing my secrets, but at this stage of the game that no longer matters.

In my old act there was plenty of misdirection and distracting patter to hide—often in plain sight—the ordinary things I did that appeared amazing. But that, you see, was kind of a backwards a metaphor for life itself. Our days seem so ordinary and we get distracted and fail to realize that life is truly amazing. We miss the trick.

Look at this coin. Do you see it? Or do you just think you see it?

Hey, where’d it go? It seems to have disappeared but wait! It’s right here! So, that’s the ordinary part.

But the coin is a zillion things, things we guess about it and things we project onto it. We see the coin as money, value preserved in a specially-designed piece of metal. We built a system that we run our whole world on based on this concept of money. But actually, it’s just a piece of metal. It might be composed of tiny particles, held together by mysterious forces, spinning wildly, embedded in an unidentifiable field of some sort.

Too abstract for you? How about this?

You, as ashes, in a jar on a mantelpiece. Because you will be dead at some point, some point soon because life is short and your remains will be somewhere. And next to you in an identical jar, your worst enemy, the person you hate most on this Earth. Both of you are silent, still. Soon to be forgotten.

Don’t gloss over this. It’s real, or will be. How do you feel about your “enemy” now?

Yeah, I’m a magician and it’s a trick. It’s a trick, though, to force you to look behind the curtain, to inspect the cards, to look at the woman and the saw and the box.

You are finally not imagining nonsense for a change. You are imagining reality.

Now forget it. Because death is nothing to be feared. In fact, death is nothing, literally nothing.

I’m old. It’s time for me to disappear. No biggie. I’m happy. For my final trick, I awakened—at least momentarily—a few sleeping souls. Starting with yours. Keep your eyes open for awhile if you can. And after that, sweet dreams.