I’m going to write about something I know a lot about: Magic Eye. It’s a fun book where you stare at intricate patterns and see an image appear. Most people need to be in a dark room, but as long as there is no other visual stimulus, it’ll work just fine.
A few years ago, my mum bought me some art supplies for my birthday and I was very excited! She bought me some paint brushes and two containers of watercolors. I had never used them before so it took me a while to experiment with different shades and mixing the colors together. But eventually, I found out what shades I liked best and how to blend them perfectly together so that they made each other stand out more instead of looking like a muddy mess.
I called my friends over and we painted the whole afternoon away, I even took out a canvas that I had gotten from somewhere and painted a picture on it with them. We were about to go home when one of my friends said: “Hey, let’s play a game!”
“What kind of game?” I asked.
“Let’s play ‘guess what it is’,” he said, “I did this cool picture of a pig but let’s see if you can guess what animal I drew.”
And so he showed me the picture and told me to close my eyes. He turned his back on me while I closed my eyes tightly shut and he held his picture behind him.
“Okay, you can open your eyes now and tell me what animal I drew,” he said excitedly. He turned around with a big smile on his face and… nothing happened! And I mean absolutely NOTHING HAPPENED!
No image appeared in front of my eyes like it would with a Magic Eye book.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, “I thought you could do this.”
“I can do it,” I said confidently, “but not with this picture.”
He handed me the picture and I stared at it intently, waiting for the image to appear. But nothing happened.
After that day, I only ever used the word ‘Magic’ to describe something if it actually had magic. So when somebody said that their car was magic, I would just laugh at them without saying anything else because that would be mean.
And then one day, somebody told me that things may not always happen the way you expect them to and it’s better to give up when something has stopped being fun.
I was happy with my watercolors, but after that day I didn’t use them much. The lesson I took from it was not to stick around if the thing you like is no longer working for you and find a new one instead of waiting for things to get better.
That’s why, when I tried to do the Magic Eye pictures and it didn’t work, I stopped trying. I found other things to do that were more fun.
But that doesn’t mean that I don’t like Magic Eye anymore. In fact, I still think it’s really cool and I’m really happy that my mum bought me the art supplies so that I could paint with my friends.
It’s just that sometimes, we all need to give up on things we like because we’ve outgrown them and other things will become more fun.
What kind of lesson does this article teach?
A Magic Eye book is not always effective when used by everyone.
Don’t stick around if something has stopped being fun.
Sometimes, we all need to give up on things we like because we’ve outgrown them and other things will become more fun.
