My husband Terry and I are among the legions of Harry Potter fanatics. We’ve both read all four books, and we’re anticipating the movie like kids at Christmas. Terry has a Hogwarts sticker on a file drawer at his work. Whenever someone comes into the office who is uninitiated into the Harry Potter phenomenon, and asks what exactly Hogwarts is, he tells them it’s his wife’s alma mater. He long ago decided that, either by choice or birth, I have certain unearthly powers. I’ve never practiced witchcraft, but he insists that’s only because I’ve chosen to deny the talent he claims I have of, well, knowing certain things, for example. I tell him he’s full of it, although my mother claims I have ancestors who were witches, and between the Scot and Welsh family tree, I’m Celtic to the bone, if that’s any indication. And I do own a black cat. However, my fascination with J.K. Rowling’s books has nothing to do with possible family connections. There have already been considerable theories put forth for the meteoric popularity of the books. The theories have a lot to do with the triumph of good over evil, and with the sudden discovery by a young, mistreated boy that he possesses an immense amount of personal power. Those factors are both there, to be sure, but I think there’s another reason the books are such a hit with so many people. After all, Charles Dickens wrote about both those themes a couple of centuries ago in Oliver Twist.
The books juxtapose ordinary, non-magical events with the extraordinary and magical in a very intimate way. On one page, the characters may be sitting in overstuffed chairs in front of a cozy fire, chatting and drinking tea. The next page might find them donning Harry’s invisibility cloak to fight the evil that’s prowling the halls of Hogwarts. Or they can be enjoying dinner in the Great Hall one moment, and facing the wrath of You-Know-Who the next. To them, the ordinary business of everyday life –going to school, making friends, sibling rivalries — is inseparable from the magical side of their lives. They flow together instead of being compartmentalized. The lines are blurred. They can go out into the Weasleys’ garden to pick vegetables for supper, and do the annual garden de-gnoming all at the same time. They are flawed mortals who can transcend the ordinary to do immense evil or immense good.
Isn’t that what most of us are looking for, this ability to have one foot in the real world while transcending it at the same time? In the poem “Birches” by Robert Frost, a young boy wants to climb to the tops of trees to get away from earth for awhile, but only with the stipulation that he can return again. Who can deny that they wouldn’t like to zip around on a broomstick playing an airborne type of soccer, and then duck inside for dinner with friends? Who can deny that they’d like to be able to turn an archenemy into an insect, then go for a picnic on a sunny spring afternoon?
We’re all seeking the magic in our own lives — just enough to take us away now and then, and then set us back down among familiar faces and places. Especially now, we’re looking for the power to deal with an enemy that seems overpowering and illusory. The characters in the book are human, as we are, and often face the specter of their own mortality, as we do. Sometimes they’re reluctant to leave the warm familiar fireside to fight the evil within and without the walls of their school. Yet they always go, sometimes defying authority to do what must be done.
They’ve discovered that what they do matters — that they can and do make a difference to each other and to the world. And that, perhaps, is the real secret of their magic, and the reason for the immense appeal of the stories. Those that appear powerless and insignificant discover that it simply isn’t so.
Maybe the books invite us to discover the magic in our own lives. What if the magic is right in front of us, and we, like Harry, just need someone to point it out, to tell us the time has come?
What if the magic isn’t really about wands and snowy owls, but it’s more about the bonds of friendship and the courage and integrity the characters find along the way? They find each other, and a sense of fun and play and hard work and perseverance, and ultimately a sense of personal power and connection.
We have the ability to do that, each of us, every day. We can choose to be tolerant and kind, or angry. We can call down a curse or blessing on someone who cuts us off in traffic, or screws up the order at the fast food drive-thru. We can let our lives become a frenzy of busywork, or we can spend time with that child or neighbor or family member who just needs someone to listen for a while.
It’s true that most of us spend a lot of time and energy making our way in the world — life demands it, the economy and the mortgage company demand it. Yet most of us yearn for those moments that transport us beyond the mundane. We can’t wave magic wands, or zip around on broomsticks. But the magic that Harry Potter discovered was much more profound than that. We don’t need any of those things. We can come out from underneath the stairwell and claim our own magic.
Once, when I was feeling especially low and depressed and feeling that life in general, and my life in particular, had no purpose at all, I happened to pick up an old copy of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, who spent several years in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII. Of all the things that were said in the book, one very simple statement stands out the most.
“Life,” he wrote, “is meaningful, simply because it’s life.” Not a profound statement, particularly, one that a thousand other people could have said. But he was the one who wrote it down, who said it to me when I needed to hear it. He worked his magic — his simple and powerful statement was what I needed to hear, and it transformed my life, and still does.
And so it is with all of us. What we have to say and offer may be exactly what someone else needs. We have magic to offer the world. It’s time. *
This article appears in Nov 17-23, 2001.
