Who can say what magic connects us to others in mysterious and unexplained ways?  We often never know or understand, but we feel it when it happens.

I feel a magic in my “discovery” of Nick Bromley, who writes a wonderful blog called Atoms of Thought.  There are strange symmetries in our musings at large, and lately in real-time.  You will not want to miss his post Encounters with Drifters and Prisoners; Thoughts on Manhood « Atoms of Thought, which segues beautifully from my own last post about Schwarzenegger.

An excerpt to tempt you:

 If they could have seen their own faces, naked with the wonder and hope of children, they may have recoiled from themselves and the unmanliness they beheld.  But they could not see what I saw.  They didn’t know that tears glistened in their eyes.  They didn’t know that they giggled like little boys who had stumbled upon some squirmy creature for the first time and were taken with the novelty of their discovery.  They were lost in themselves, lost in the world that was new to them again, forgetful of the manliness society told them they had to project from a young age. 

There’s something wonderful about watching a grown man return to himself, seeing him shake off the costume of masculinity and toughness in which he usually clothes himself, and listening to him as he expresses the complex mixture of hope, confusion, and fear that our culture tells us to suppress.

My next post will be about this very focus in Essays on Childhood.  Thank you, Nick, for generously sharing your reflections on your own blog, and for allowing me to link to them here.

I know Esse Diem readers will enjoy this post!

Image credit: 1789 Book of Common Prayer