Do you believe in magic? Part 2

Do you believe in magic? Part 2 

A daughter’s quest for life direction… and magic tricks

By Franki Rudnesky

Thinking about the way that my dad meshed a simple magic trick with a life lesson, though, opened my eyes to the fact that maybe I wasn’t only trying to learn a magic trick from my dad; maybe I was just looking for some advice to make my own “magic.”

            As a college student, the (unrealistic) expectation is often that you have your life totally planned out and know exactly what your next step will be once you obtain your degree. For me, this has certainly never been the case. Ever since high school, I’ve been surrounded by classmates who knew that they’d be pursuing careers in accounting, nursing, education, law, etc. As a high school senior, I felt extremely stifled by this because unlike my classmates, I hadn’t the slightest clue what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

            Going into my freshman year at Saint Joseph’s University, I still felt anxious and torn in a million directions. Did I want to work in education like both my parents? Should I become a veterinarian like I’d planned on in elementary school? Should I pursue business, like most of my fellow prospective students at St. Joe’s? Or, should I follow my own passion, even if it meant forging my own path in uncharted territory?

            I eventually decided on the latter, switching my major to English due to my lifelong passions for reading and writing. Even though I decided on a major, it still didn’t answer the question of what exactly I’d be doing after walking across the stage at the ripe old age of 21 to accept my undergraduate diploma.

            I want to find a career that I love, that makes a difference for others, that makes my family and I proud; not something I’m just doing to become rich.

            So, if my dad wouldn’t reveal his ‘magician’s secrets,’ maybe he’d reveal his secret to finding his passion and vocation in life. After all, his own path, like I imagine mine to be, was anything but direct.

            Back home in Hammonton, NJ, I decided to breech the topic of my dad’s winding path to his passion.

            “Sometimes your path finds you,” my dad says, sorting through all of the magical equipment kept in the back room of our basement. There’s a large apparatus meant to ‘slice’ his arm off in front of a gaping crowd, puppets, a box in which he once locked himself and was thrown into a river to perform an escape like Houdini, boxes of playing cards, hats, and even cages where his show doves used to reside. (Apparently my first-ever word was “coo,” because as a baby I’d always hear the doves cooing loudly from the basement).

            Watching my dad shuffle some playing cards in preparation for a trick, I asked him how exactly he became a magician and whether it influenced his becoming an educator.

            “I worked at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco as a street magician to help me get through college,” he said, asking me to choose a card. “The job was fun and mysterious, so I ended up opening my own magic shop after graduation. I performed all over, even on Donald Trump’s yacht in Atlantic City. I actually started teaching because my magic shop in Wildwood was closed during the winter.”

            I smiled, remembering the many magic shows when I acted as my dad’s assistant, clad in a black dress with stars and moons. One time, he even made me float in front of my whole elementary school.

            After choosing a card and watching my dad furiously shuffle the deck, I decided to cut to the chase.

            “Dad, how will I know what my passion is? I feel like I have lots of passions. I like journalism but I also like writing fiction and poetry and I think I might even like teaching literature to kids,” I said, picking at a loose string on my jeans and thinking of all the times I struggled to even decide what I wanted to eat for dinner that night.

            “You can be passionate about more than one thing,” he said, suppressing a laugh at my exasperated expression. “But just make sure that you’re passionate about what you choose to do, or else don’t do it. “

            “Well, didn’t you have to give up magic to become a teacher?” I asked.

            “I will always do magic,” he replied to me, grabbing my chosen card from behind my ear, to my surprise. “But the one think I always wanted to do was be a great difference-maker, and I found that I was able to do that as an educator. I was able to bring magic into the lives of my students, the magic of believing in them, which made them believe in themselves too.”

            I asked him how on earth he found my chosen card behind my ear, taking the deck from him and looking through it for any clues.

            “Perception is reality,” he responded. “If you could do anything, what would it be?”

            I began shuffling the deck, wondering what kind of magic my passions would bring to others.

            “More than anything,” my dad said, noticing I was deep in thought about the question that he posed. “Be sure to always work hard, be successful, and have fun. That’s how you’ll make your own magic.”