Time after time, I find myself consumed by this idea that there's something more to the world.

That's nothing remarkable, really. So many stories, folklore or modern fiction, play on that very idea; there's more to the world than what we can see; there are powers beyond our comprehension; if only we had the talent, or the knowledge, we could wield these powers! For greatness, or for dreadful means.

Of course, there aren't. I often tell myself that that's OK: the world is magical enough! We banalise the magic as science and technique, but truly there is magic. There is more to the world than we can see or touch or feel, and there are ways to wield that power. There are those with the talent, and there are those with the knowledge. And these powers can be wielded for greatness, and for dread. However, the fact these powers are ripe for the taking... The talent bar low, and the knowledge readily available, seems to sap them of their magical quality. How unfortunate.

I remember my brother being upset that dragons aren't, and never have been, real. He was upset at me telling him that, so straightforwardly, because he felt that the idea that they could've been real was more valuable than the knowledge that they are simply impossible. At the time, this nuance evaded me... After all, there are so many ridiculous, incredible, fascinating beings that are real, that the idea that dragons exist seemed dull, if anything, in comparison to the breadth of real fauna. I get it now... It is frustrating, no doubt, not because cool things don't exist, but because the cool things that do exist are so openly real, that they are mundane and normal, and so, their magic is gone.

This almost sounds like I hope for an era of ignorance, so that, by virtue of not-knowing, magic can return. That, or, I suppose, an era of unfettered discovery, so that everything new could be seen as magic, even if only for a while, before the explanations are spread.

But I'm not hoping for either. In fact, I think the way the world operates, in this regard, anyway, is fine. I just wish I could come to terms with it a bit better. I wish it didn't hurt as much.

I wore my brown suit trousers.

I think that a good ... coping mechanism? for this, is worldbuilding excercises, trying to make alt histories or futures that... are actually plausible.

The built world has only one or a few ... fundamental rule changes, but the magic is in playing them out, with rigor, and trying to comprehend what emerges.

Or with alt history... find a moment in history that basically did hinge on just dumb luck. Flip the coin differently... what does that do?

Chaos. It isn't magic, because it follows rules. But it ... is magic in that... it is so complicated that sometimes, some changes amount to almosy nothing... othertimes, they amount to fantastic and incredible things.

More recently we also have speculative evolution that essentially tries to do something similar with biology and ecology.

I have found these to be both fulfilling, and to help change your perspective, to not be so mournful of what could be, but isn't.

Sort of a way of coming to grips with the limits of your own ability to both perceive and conceive. When you better know those limits... you have an ... acceptance of the space between 'magic' and mundane, because you see (or create?) more ways that they are actually interwoven, and cause each other.

You can then see the actual world as that ... nearly, but not quite nonsensical mixture of 'magic' and mundane... you can even almost see the branching paths of possibility, in some real situations.

I don't know if that's a kind of madness, or a kind of wisdom.

But I know that I don't really care, because, I am having a good time, being this way.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars—mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere.” I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination—stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern—of which I am a part. … What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the “why?” It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

— Richard P. Feynman
In 'Astronomy', The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961

Well, he had a bit of a way with words, this Feynman fellow...

Hmmm Yeah, I get that, to an extent.

I actually watch a YT channel (Tor's Cabinet of Curiosities) and occasionally there will be a video with alternate history. It's definitely interesting!