Abbondanza! Getting My Magic Back

Been a rough cou­ple of months – years – over here, the very ground beneath my feet shak­ing me into a new life. Everything that makes me me has been in tran­si­tion, and we all know how hard change can be. I’ve felt wob­bly, itchy, so joy­ful, and so bereft. If wak­ing up was easy, we’d all do it. For the dream­ers like me who live in fan­ta­sy more often than soci­etal expec­ta­tion, it can be incred­i­bly painful. 

So, I was unpre­pared for the moment my mag­ic returned. I had sort of for­got­ten about mag­ic, if I’m being hon­est. I’ve been mud­dling along, get­ting by, check­ing the box­es, eat­ing infi­nite amounts of pro­tein, and fin­ish­ing the book club books, even when I hat­ed them. Fold the laun­dry, pay the bills, call the moth­er-in-law, prac­tice the scales, feed the dog, buy more toi­let paper, day after day of the mun­dane moments that make up a life. I’m sure there was mag­ic all around me – there always is – but I was too busy and exhaust­ed to notice.

But then I saw the ocean for the very first time.

Let me explain. I’ve seen the ocean, sure. Many times, and on sev­er­al con­ti­nents. But I’ve nev­er real­ly seen the ocean. 

You prob­a­bly know by now that I am col­or­blind, a rar­i­ty in women (less than ½% of women are col­or­blind, com­pared to more than 8% of men). This means my eyes don’t absorb pho­tons, or light par­ti­cles, as well as the aver­age bear, so every­thing looks mut­ed and sepia-toned, like Kansas before Dorothy gets to Oz. But thanks to tech­nol­o­gy, I now have what I call “mag­ic glass­es,” which allow me to take in more light par­ti­cles and see the world like every­one else.

On a recent yoga retreat to Tulum, Mexico, my mag­ic glass­es allowed me to see the ocean for the first time and I was not ful­ly pre­pared. In fact, I burst into tears, so over­whelmed by the fact that the sky and the water are not the same col­or, as I had always assumed. In fact, I had to look up a Sherwin Williams col­or palette to describe all the lay­ers of col­or I was see­ing. Ionian blue. Lagoon. Morning Fog. Calypso. Teal, turquoise, aqua, spearmint, the list of shades I was expe­ri­enc­ing was seem­ing­ly endless.

And just like that, I woke up. I was no longer just hang­ing out between the dirt and the stars, but actu­al­ly alive to the around me.

“Abbondanza!” I thought sud­den­ly, a word I learned in Italy while sit­ting at a table over­look­ing a dif­fer­ent – but the same – ocean, enjoy­ing an Aperol spritz and crusty bread driz­zled with olive oil. When the wait­er brought me some olives to go with, he whis­pered, “Abbondanza!”  It lit­er­al­ly trans­lates to abun­dance, but it isn’t just a word. Abbondanza is a way of life, a way of exist­ing that acknowl­edges all of the gifts we’ve been giv­en from this 14-bil­lion-year jour­ney. Even with the giant mess humans seem to be mak­ing of the world recent­ly, abbon­dan­za grants that we enjoy an unpar­al­leled free­dom in rela­tion to our ancestors. 

The incom­pa­ra­ble beau­ty of nature, the art, lit­er­a­ture, and music of our fore­bears, and the ingrained impulse to look around for pas­sion and pur­pose is there for the ask­ing. Abbondanza is hon­or­ing the mag­ic of being alive in this body, in this time, with these experiences.

May I stay ever awake.