I have a Mary Oliver poem hanging above my desk, where I can see it every day. It’s called The Ponds and it opens like this: “Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled…”

To be willing to be dazzled. Not to be distracted by the shiny or bamboozled by bilkers. Not to be beguiled by the unlikely or seduced by pseudo-spirituality. But, instead, to be sufficiently open in our hearts and minds to embrace the willingness to feel awe. To allow ourselves to be overcome with wonder. To accept the moments of transcendence that leave us speechless.

I’ve always called this magic because, when it arrives at my door and steps over the threshold, it always feels like some kind of impossible enchantment to me. But recently, my friend Margie framed this in a new light. She said: “Giving the universe free reign isn’t magic. It’s creation.”

Something from nothing

And what, ultimately, is creation? It is the summoning of something that wasn’t previously there. Every word I write, in this moment, calling each up from my depth, from the far reaches of my mind, from the neural impulses dancing across my brain; every sentence I construct, with its weave and weft, its lift and lilt, its intent and intimation; all coming together in a new form never before constructed or conceived… Creation. Quite literally at my fingertips.

At all of our fingertips, really, or however it expresses for you. As song, movement, speech, free-flowing ideas. As physical mastery, financial acumen, artistic flair. Everything we see and touch, every story we tell, every lyric we belt, all of it has been called from a great, amorphous nothingness and literally imagined into existence. And amazingly, astoundingly, astonishingly, this makes us all not wizards or shamans or magicians. It makes us co-creators of our universal reality.

With power comes responsibility

In his book, The Warrior Prophet, author R. Scott Bakker wrote, “Make no mistake: this moment, the instant of this very breath, is the frail thread from which all creation hangs. That men dare to be thoughtless…”

And that’s the essence of it, isn’t it? We quite literally hold the power of gods in our cupped palms — and with that power, the capacity to turn any vision into reality. Too often, the media plays up the horrifying outcomes of that knack, the potential for perfection warped into something snarling and ugly and violent. Because every power has its flip side, and there can be no doubt that creation without thought can only lead to destruction.

Like Mary Oliver, though, we have another choice. We can choose to be willing to be dazzled. We can consciously shine light into the dark recesses of the world — and of our minds — and conquer the demons that hide there. We can seek out the sacred, honour the holy, exalt the awe. Each moment, with each of our breaths, we are literally creating our cosmos. Let’s commit to creating something beautiful.