My powers are magnified

My heart is always warmed when I read of tourists who visit a foreign land for a quick holiday and end up making a lifelong friend… of an animal. I’ve been tempted many times to smuggle pets from far-flung countries — there was a parrot in Tokyo, a three-legged mongrel in Los Angeles, a cat in Madrid…

URI GELLER, Monday April 12, 2004.

To a child, the real world is what is happening right in front of their eyes – and if that means a spoon is bending or a seed is sprouting, then that is what’s real.

To most adults, the opposite is true: the real world is what the headlines report, what the rumours say, what TV shows us. The one thing we fail to take at face value is what happens under our noses. Ever since my own kids were born, I’ve made a conscious effort to keep a childlike outlook. When my two were toddlers, they had far more to teach me than any college professor. One of the greatest lessons was observing their spontaneous joy – both Daniel and Natalie had happy natures and they were always a split-second away from laughter. No matter what was going on – meal-time, bed-time, bath-time, any time – they were able to fix their attention instantly on fun and share their enjoyment. That’s so different to the adult approach. To have fun, we must plan it for weeks, lavish a fortune on the preparations, lie awake worrying about what we’ve forgotten… and then, as often as not, grit our teeth when the whole enterprise goes down in flames. I believe the best times happen when we stop trying to shape our fate and simply go with the flow. Most of all, I believe in living for the moment – I don’t dwell on what happened five minutes ago, and I don’t fret about what’s coming up in five minutes time. The adult world regularly tries to shock me out of those beliefs, of course, and it’s always great to spend time with young kids, to rediscover their carefree sense of immediacy. I was especially delighted to be presented with five little ‘granddaughters’, while filming a commercial at my home last week. I had to bend spoons for each of them, and with their excitement setting the house abuzz, curling the metal was as easy as folding paper.