Find your magic

I love this little story told by Jason Reitman, director of Juno, about how he decided to follow his dream and become a director.

Ivan, who grew up in Toronto, discovered a sub shop in Montreal. He asked his father for some money to open his own branch in Toronto; he was sure it would be very successful, as Jason recounted: And my grandfather said: ‘You know, Ivan, I’m sure these sandwiches are very good, and if I gave you the money to open up a sandwich shop, we’d do very well for ourselves, and your mother and I would be very proud of you. But there’s simply not enough magic in it for you. You need to find something with magic.’ And this was a huge thing, my grandfather was a Holocaust survivor who came to Canada basically as a refugee, and he worked at a dry cleaner and a car wash, and then he had it within him to tell my father, find something with magic in it, and that’s I think what drove him to become a filmmaker. And my father told me this story, he said: ‘Jason, there’s no more noble a profession in the world than becoming a doctor, if you became a doctor, your mother and I would be over the moon, we’d be so proud of you. But I don’t think there’s enough magic in it for you, I think you’re a storyteller, and I think you have to follow your heart.’ And in that moment he became the first Jewish father to tell his son, ‘Don’t be a doctor.’

So what are you doing to fill your life with magic? Me, I'm building my own business, writing a young adult novel literally filled with magic, and surrounding myself with encouragers. The point is, find your way in life to something (people, career, hobbies, etc.) that fills your life with magic.