A Little Bit of Magic

There’s something deeply human about the need to impose order on chaos. When life begins to fray at the edges—when work becomes a knot of deadlines, when exhaustion creeps in, when the invisible weight of too many things presses down—I turn to a kind of magic. Not the kind with wands and incantations, but a quieter, more practical sorcery: sympathetic magic.

It’s a term rooted in anthropology and folklore, describing the belief that like affects like. That symbolic actions can influence reality. It’s the reason people carry lucky charms, why rituals persist across cultures, why we blow out birthday candles as if our breath holds the power to shape the future. And in my own way, I’ve been practicing it for at least two decades. I learned about it way back in the 90s when I was exploring my spirituality.

So now when life gets tangled, I untangle my space.

I clean and clear out my room, sorting through the objects that have absorbed the energy of my days. I air out the corners, let fresh air and light press into the places where stagnation has settled. I sage, not because I think smoke alone will banish troubles, but because the act itself is a declaration: This space is mine, and I am reclaiming it.

There’s a logic to it, of course. A space that flows better feels better. Clutter—physical, mental, emotional—presses down like low ceilings, shrinking the sense of possibility. So I align things. I organize. I create a kind of symmetry, pretending (or perhaps believing) that if my room can breathe, then maybe I can too.

It’s a small rebellion against burnout. A ritual reset when things feel too much.

And today, I need that ritual.

The burnout is already curling at the edges of my days, fraying my patience, dulling my sharpness. I can feel the weight of the weeks settling into my bones. So I will clean. I will clear. I will move things into alignment. I will mark the space with intention, imagining that the shift in my surroundings will ripple outward into the tangled web of deadlines, expectations, and exhaustion.

Will it work?

Maybe. Maybe not. But sympathetic magic is as much about the mind as it is about the act. And if the act reminds me that I still have agency—that I am not at the mercy of the chaos—then it has already done its work.

So I begin.