On Magical Thinking

Joan Didion wrote a book called The Year of Magical Thinking in 2004, and it has lived cozied up in the corners of my consciousness since I first read it in 2022. Not only because of its beautiful, raw, contemplative writing on the year following the death of Didion’s husband, John, but also, tangentially, because of how many people I know who have been duped into reading the book. Though when I say duped, I don’t mean by anyone but themselves.

Los Angeles – where I used to live, pursing a career in the performing arts – has an abundance of people of a particular breed, who believe that everything within their imagination lies within their reach. So long as they harness their mind away from thinking anything to the contrary, they believe every step of their destiny remains within their control. I think this belief might serve as paramount to anyone’s ability to, if not wholly succeed in Hollywood, at least remain on the path of trying. I once belonged to this breed of people, though I also frequently fell into the trap of fearing that I might not believe enough, and that this belief might sabotage any chance of mine at success. All of this to say, though I was both aware of the subject matter of Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and completely done with Hollywood by the time I picked it up, the title does sometimes mislead people to think that the book serves as a Jen Sincero-esque account on how the power of manifestation might transform one’s life into a landscape of unimaginable success within the course of a year through a simple shift in mindset, ala You Are a Badass. Readers under this impression might then grow shocked at how heartbreaking and far from uplifting Didion’s account proves to be. They might find themselves wondering where the theme of magical thinking comes in. Their subsequent realization is what interests me the most about the phenomenon of this frequent case of mistaken book identity. Didion’s experience with magical thinking is a far cry from Sincero’s account of supernaturally manifesting a free parking spot anywhere in Los Angeles with the power of her mind. Didion writes about the protective state of delusion her mind surrendered itself to upon dealing with the death of her husband. The lucidity with which she thinks how because John in New York, his death wouldn’t be a reality in California until three hours later. The earnestness with which she believes that if she refrains from donating his shoes, he might yet return. He’ll need his shoes when he comes home, after all.

This new take on the definition of magical thinking, not as something freely wielded by the mind to one’s greatest material benefit, but rather as a disturbing, stress driven, grief-stricken flirtation with insanity, can prove illuminating. It is only because I have dealt with so many people who subscribe to the belief that their thoughts dictate their reality that I can confidently say that this fear around the consequences of their own doubt is an inherent trait of this breed of magical thinkers. While this makes such a belief system an incredibly stressful thing to adopt, the absence of this trait leans into the territory of mental illnesses concerned with delusions of self-grandeur. It is completely normal to doubt oneself, but if that doubt suddenly takes on the weight of one’s entire success or future, it’s suddenly closer to something pathological. I’ve seen people agonize over whether entertaining the fear of a loved-one’s safety on a plane will bring about their death. Or become so hypervigilant of everything as a potential sign that they worry because they spill their coffee on themselves in the morning it means they’re on the wrong path in life. I myself had a phase of believing that if I didn’t see a particular sequence of numbers on the clock or a random license plate, something bad was going to happen. This is the other side of magical thinking. It’s not all free parking spots and serendipitous auditions.

Having my own experience with toxic magical thinking, I don’t say any of this to denigrate people who believe in the power of manifestation and fall victim to some of the darker mental trappings that lie within it. In bringing attention to these trappings, I also don’t mean to throw the baby out with the bathwater, labeling anyone who might have engaged in episodes of magical thinking as absolutely delusional. Like with any dogma, it’s important to consider whether the strictness of such a belief may prove more harmful than beneficial, or whether it makes sense at all. When I wake up from a nap at exactly 5:55pm and believe that means a devastating earthquake or something of that nature must be imminent, such magical thinking proves neither beneficial nor sensical. But when Joan Didion saw her husband abruptly pass away at the dinner table, it only makes sense her mind might want to negotiate with the reality of her loss, to protect her, or give her time to adjust to the full blow of her devastating situation. Similarly, in an industry where the only tried, tested, and true formula for success seems to be nepotism, an aspiring actor’s morale might depend on a well-intentioned illusion of greater control than reality necessarily dictates. Magical thinking may only lie a few precarious steps away from insanity, but without a little bit of magical thinking, we might lose our sanity all the same. How do you strike up the balance, and find the right little touch of insanity to stay sane? And how does your own little dose of magical thinking help you get through the day?

I’ve found that for me, the key to striking the right balance between magic and insanity lies in the employment of flexibility in my mindsets. When I was with my ex, despite all evidence of the unviability of our relationship, the mental abuse I endured left me so worried about the consequences of leaving or being alone that I needed some type of esoteric symbol to serve as a kind of supernatural encouragement that staying was somehow the right thing to do. For some reason, I decided that all of that hinged on the number 222. When I saw it by chance somewhere, I felt encouraged. On the other hand, when I would check the time and see 2:23, my stomach would drop, thinking that the fact that I missed the opportune moment to receive my chance at affirmation meant something terrible was going to happen.

When I finally woke up to my necessity to leave that relationship, I had to come to terms with the delusional nature of all my mental attachments to random symbols as “signs from the universe.” Then, when I met my current partner, I learned a kind of love I had always dreamed of but up had never received any proof existence for up until that point. When I re-read The Year of Magical Thinking more recently, I finally knew from experience what Didion was lamenting the loss of. That true love, companionship, and understanding. And what’s funny, is that my partner was born at 2:23. There’s a world where that just happened to be the time the doctor saw on the clock when he was delivered. There’s a world where that means he’s a Sagittarius rising and all sorts of other things. And there’s a world where every time I saw the number 223 leading up to meeting him, it was telling me I was in the wrong place, because there was something so much better out there waiting for me; if I had just been flexible enough to believe that 223 was actually the omen for me. And just like any other omen I ever formed an attachment to in the past, I now understand that my belief in it has more to do with my own mindset, my own experience of reality projected onto a belief, than any sort of pre-cemented sign from the universe. That’s my balance between magic and sanity.