Our Society Is Addicted to its 'Logic'. Here's How to See Reality Again.

The Noise of "Normal"

My first job out of college was as a Legislative Aide on Capitol Hill. I spent years moving through the political arena of Washington D.C. In that world, everything is incentivized toward being a "serious," reputable person. Credibility is currency, and it’s earned by adhering to a very specific script—a pre-approved vernacular, logical frameworks, an agreement of focus, tone perspectives. These agreements are set by the Congressional members themselves, urged and whipped by Political leadership.

I’m grateful to be in more creative spaces now, but that experience showed me just how suffocating certain realities can be.

What happens when the relentless pressure to perform this "logic" causes us to miss something fundamental about our own existence? What if the very language we’re taught becomes a cage, preventing us from appreciating the sheer wonder of the world around us?

This isn't about fantasy or superstition.

This is about recognizing the vast, and often inexplicable phenomena that our typical narratives fail to capture. It’s about learning to see the miraculous in the mundane, right here and now.

Our Logic Is a Trap That Blinds Us

The societal pressure to be logical is often a demand to conform to an accepted narrative or perspective. When you experience complex phenomena ... the logic acts as a foundational operating system. It filters and processes the experience through the words and assumptions that have been prior accepted. It discards or completely fails to notice things that don't already have a name - aren't part of the logic.

How limiting is it, if every word you say - every sentence you make & the way you view the world - is filtered through language, labels and assumptions that have been prior vetted and told to you. Well this is our condition from the day of our birth.

Magic Is Just the Stuff We Take for Granted

Magic can be defined as merely phenomena that escapes our understanding. While science has given us language for things once considered supernatural - like earthquakes or volcanic eruptions - it hasn't eliminated the mystery of life and consciousness. The more we learn, the more we arrive at an unknown element—a level of complexity and improbability that is truly staggering.

We are surrounded by this magic at every second, but we’ve been conditioned to take it for granted. Why are we not perpetually in awe?

• The Cosmos: Our very existence unfolds on a knife's edge of ecological overlapping realities of complexity and collaboration and competition. We are orbiting the sun in an absurdly precise arrangement required to support life as we know it. This precarious, dynamic balance is, by any measure, extraordinary.

• Your Own Body: Your heart is pumping, your lungs are breathing, and your eyes are translating light into a coherent spatial reality—all without your conscious intention. Imagine if it were not that way. Imagine if you had to consciously, actively remember to breathe every few seconds. The fact that these intricate systems just work is a miracle.

• Consciousness Itself: The simple, unexplainable fact that you have the ability to experience is the ultimate magic. The capacity to see, taste, touch, be aware of our immediate surroundings. The ability to tell stories and hold identities; to create, to experience joys and disappointments ... these aspects of reality exist profoundly, and we continue to learn more about how and why it all works.

• Video Gaming: The technological leap from first-generation cartridge console to a modern online game like Overwatch—where a dozen people interact in real-time across the globe, enabled by invisible forces like Wi-Fi—is an incredible feat that a child born today will simply accept as normal.

  
  
  
  

The Stories We Tell Ourselves Govern Our Reality

Human behavior can vary widely based on the story that each of us is holding. The narrative we adopt—the very language we use to define our world—directly shapes what we are able to perceive.

If our story is too small, it will filter out the magic, replacing it with a banal, more familiar story. This is why our language must evolve. When scientists discover a "third state" of life they give us new language for a phenomenon that has always existed, but was previously invisible to us.

Here are two common but limiting stories, which illustrate what happens when our language and frames of reference stagnate. By no means are these the only stories that fail to capture the moment, but I am familiar with these ...

1. The Stagnant Atheist-Materialist Story: This narrative can reduce our existence to being "just an evolved ape." In its attempt to explain the "how" of life, it often fails to appreciate a much deeper truth about reality. By holding this logic story too rigidly, we marginalize and ignore whole swaths of reality. We undermine and dismiss a fuller complexity of what occurs as beings with consciousness in a mysterious universe.

2. The Stagnant Religious Story: I recently spoke with a friend, a staunch Christian, who is deeply invested in events that happened 2,000 years ago. Christ's birth and death are special markers from a special time. For him, the days we live in are something different, less magical. The present is a dark, sinful waiting room for a future return of magic and opportunity and beauty. This narrative - fixated on historical events and past language - fails to notice that the same divine or magical force that was present then is also fully present now.

Our identity story—whether political, scientific, or spiritual—acts as the operating system for our consciousness. And that operating system must be written in the language and explanatory narrative that we've chosen, or that we inherited from our cultures. The Truth is always bigger than the story we hold - there will always be something deeper, a new perspective, lost knowledge, marginalized experience. Awareness holds the key to seeing, experiencing and accepting these possibilities.

The problem isn't a lack of magic - it's a lack of awareness, and a failure of language. The ancient narratives and miracles point to profound phenomena, which have not ceased to exist. We are living through it right now - The wonder of existence is a present-tense reality.

Conclusion: Notice & Choose a Bigger, Truer Story

By daring to step outside the narrow confines of socially-accepted logic and by questioning the inherited stories we tell ourselves, we reopen our eyes to the profound nature of our immediate reality. The world is not the dry, cynical place depicted in the daily news cycle. It is a complex, evolving, and miraculous place beyond our understanding.

The first step is simple. Unplug from the noise.

Turn off the screens - turn off Corporate News, in particular - step away from the buildings, and tech, and the man made structures. Go somewhere that we might call nature - where trees grow and water streams. Notice how things aren't boxy; things are wiggly and wavy, always moving, eating, evolving.

Allow yourself to tell a bigger story about who you are and what this all is.

A story that has room for wonder, gratitude, and acceptance for the deep, wide, mysterious truth of a universe that is far more magical than our limited logics can ever comprehend. From there you can appreciate the opportunities now presented, developing greater intention and joy.

-Billy