Awe is Magnetic

On perspective, desire, and where your thoughts live

Spirals are staircases. You think you are going back to the same place, but somehow you’re on a different floor. Last week I was spiraling into the sky, but this week I’ve landed back here on Earth. And so have the astronauts who returned safely last week, coming home with a kind of wisdom and awe that feels hard to explain but impossible to ignore. Like repeating a dream or an MDMA experience , except this time we all witnessed it.

The Artemis II crew just splashed down in the Pacific last Friday, the first humans to fly around the moon in more than fifty years, and they keep trying to tell us something simple. Look at this. Look where you are. Look who you’re with. It felt like sermons in space.

We are just a small, beautiful planet floating around with all these tiny worries and enormous joys. The crew called it “moon joy,” that feeling of seeing the moon up close for the first time, colors and craters and a surface that looks nothing like the moon you see from your backyard. Did you know there were colors on the moon? If you knew, let’s be friends.

Astronaut Christina Koch said that looking back at Earth, what struck her wasn’t just the beauty but the blackness around it. That the blackness made it more special. That the same thing keeps every single person on Earth alive. And then she said the thing that stopped me. “Earth was just this lifeboat hanging undisturbed in the universe.”

UNDISTURBED! That is not how I would have described my experience on Earth or if you look within, you either!. But she is right. We are so taken care of in ways we take for granted.

She said being in space didn’t change her perspective, it reaffirmed it. That our purpose is to lift each other up, to create instead of destroy. And then Koch said we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other. If you think Mars is the solution, I love you for that. Truly. But I’m staying here and taking all this awe in! New perspective unlocked! I also think it so silly how serious we take ourselves, we literally live on a planet thats so cinematic

All this awe brought me to this Chasidic idea that a person is where their thoughts are. And if that’s true, then where am I actually living most of the time? At any given moment, my thoughts can be anywhere from my new haircut feels uneven, to we need a Glee remake with TikTok stars asap, to wow I finally understand space but not taxes. Happy tax day BTW to those that observe, cuties.

I remember first learning Transcendental Meditation and the teacher said your thoughts are like the waves of the ocean and we want to get you to the bottom where there is peace. Which is a beautiful metaphor. Personally, a bad one for me. Because when I turned 40, I tried to get my scuba license in Malibu in winter during Covid. I cheated through the written test and then showed up to the in-person session where the instructor said, cheerfully, so we are here today to learn rescue diving. I had accidentally signed up for a Malibu rescue dive certification. Anyway. My thoughts were not peaceful down there staring at bunk sand dollars. I’ll say that.

So I’m trying something new. I am going to conquer my thoughts, or at least clean up the subconscious mess, and honestly it might be over for you hoes.

What is this bold new era, you ask. What mountain am I climbing now. MANIFESTING!

Manifesting. I know.

There comes a point where your algorithm stops feeling like entertainment and starts feeling like a mirror. Suddenly it’s women in matching Alo sets telling you to manifest your dream life and something in you gets a little… defensive. I am a recovering psychic addict. I used to outsource my inner life to whatever sounded the most certain. Vision boards, affirmations, crystals, a woman on TikTok who “just knew.” That girl had to go. I laid all of it down and gave it to God. Fully.

So I was not, in theory, a candidate for this. And yet last week in my spiral about my life I reached out as a lifeline to a friend I’d been quietly envious of. She has that life that feels full in a way you can’t fake. Creative, grounded, loving to herself and other people, beautiful home, real family, the whole thing. They say follow your envy. It will show you where you want to go. And unfortunately I wanted to go directly into her life. She was so excited to share her tips. She told me to download the To Be Magnetic app and sent me a stack of books.

Now before you roll your eyes. Think to yourself, are you living your dream life? and if you are congrats and if you aren’t then be a little open minded to a woman wanting to live hers and tap the like button to this post!

Because here is the thing. This isn’t about pretending your life is amazing while your nervous system is like, absolutely not. This is about what you actually believe underneath everything. The part of you that quietly decides what you’re allowed to have.

And this is where it gets annoying. Because there is actual science here. Not in a woo woo way. In a your brain is a pattern recognition machine kind of way. Your thoughts are constantly filtering reality through what you already believe is possible. It’s basically the Reticular Activating System doing its job, that just means the neurons in your brain, sorry I’m just so STEM now. You tell it something matters, it starts finding it everywhere. You tell it something isn’t for you, even subconsciously , it quietly edits it out.

So when people say manifesting, what they really mean is… training your brain to stop rejecting the life you say you want. I can’t fully explain it. I just know something is shifting.

It’s been five days and I feel peaceful, which, if you know me, is not a casual word. And it’s not because everything changed. It’s because I can imagine good things happening. Specifically. Big and good and nice things. For me. For the people I love. Even for people I don’t know.

It’s important to list your manifestations big and small! I want an aligned partnership. I want a navy or burnt burgundy vintage Kelly bag. I want a La Cornue stove in green or steel gray. I want healthy boy girl twins, however God or science decides. I want a life that feels full and shared and real. And I want to be someone who can imagine that life without flinching. and a life that someone else would feel envious of and I can pay it forward.

The more you surround yourself with people living lives that feel true and expansive, the more your nervous system starts to believe it’s possible.

There’s something about awe for life or even others that changes things. It pulls you out of the small version of your life and drops you into something bigger. Astronauts talk about this all the time, that being in space doesn’t make you want to escape Earth, it makes you love it more. You don’t need to go to space to feel that, I certainly won’t be! But once you touch it, even a little, it’s hard to go back.

Awe is magnetic and we can be too! Let’s all be magnetic beings on this cute little planet we share shall we?

MORE THINGS I’M THINKING ABOUT

THE OLYMPICS

The Olympics are in Los Angeles, July 14th through the 30th, 2028. The Olympics. Here. In two years. I missed the first ticket draw, registration closed March 18th, and I was apparently not paying attention, but here is what you need to do right now. Go to https://la28.org, create a profile, and sign up for the newsletter. Once you’re registered, you’re automatically entered into every future draw. Nearly half of all tickets are under $200. The cheapest ones started at $28. For the Olympics. In your city. There is no excuse. I want gymnastics and I want basketball and I intend to be sitting in a seat somewhere watching a human being do something physically impossible and crying about it.

LACMA

I am very excited about the new Geffen Gallery at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It opens next week for members, April 21. Yes, I am a member, I’m so cultured! Apparently the exhibition is curated around bodies of water, which feels both calming and a little conceptual in a way I trust. Also, Erewhon Market is doing drinks there, which feels like exactly the kind of crossover we need. Let’s get people interested in art again. Or at least get them there and let the art do its job.

THE LOCKET APP

The kids are using this app called Locket Widget where you share photos directly to a small group’s home screens. Up to 20 friends. It just appears there. No feed, no scrolling, no performance. It’s kind of beautiful.Very intimate. Which is probably why it works. This is a good sign for humanity. Simplicity in social media is becoming a trend.

A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT

I got this from seeing The Drama, GO SEE THE DRAMA . Sometimes I think about how quickly you can get to the truth if you just skip the surface. Like asking someone the worst thing they’ve ever done. Or the worst thing they’ve ever thought about. Brings it all back to the power of thought, should we punished for our thoughts? The movie wants you to think about that, so go and think about that!.

One more!

Text a friend out of nowhere and ask, what’s your core wound? Time to learn about the people you love so you can love them more freely. and the core wound question came from the work on the To Be Magnetic app. See I’m in the work !

A RESET

I highly recommend looking at a photo of your younger self. Or someone you love as a kid. It always centers me. Just this immediate feeling of wow, I love that little cutie. And then remembering that person is still here.

Anyway, I’m feeling peaceful on earth not despite it all because of all it!