(or, The Art of Procrastinating in Style)
One of the great lies we tell ourselves is that thinking about something long enough is basically the same as doing it. This is a core tenet of magical thinking—the belief that if you mentally marinate in a fantasy long enough, the sheer force of your yearning will bend the universe to your will.
It won’t.
Take, for example, the 10-year hostage situation between me and a pair of skinny jeans. For a full decade, those pants lurked in my closet, whispering false hope: One day, you’ll fit into us. Just wait. And so I did. I waited. I waited through countless failed diets, through the betrayal of metabolism, through years of magical thinking that the mere presence of those jeans in my home would, somehow, sculpt my body into compliance.
Eventually, I accepted the truth: those jeans weren’t a beacon of future success—they were a fabric monument to my delusion. I finally threw them away, but not before they had spent ten years mocking me from the hanger.
This same delusion infects all sorts of people in all sorts of ways.
- A man keeps a fisherman’s hat tucked away in a drawer, convinced that someday he’ll own a boat, sail through the Caribbean, and live off the sea. Never mind that he gets seasick on ferries and can’t tell port from starboard. The hat is proof of intent, and that’s enough—for now.
- A woman buys an aspirational vegan cookbook, proudly displaying it on her shelf. She has never gone a single day without cheese, but surely, just owning the book puts her on the path to righteousness.
- I strap a big, chunky superhero-esque watch to my wrist, as if its sheer presence will one day grant me the power to save myself. It won’t. It just makes my wrist hurt.
Magical thinking is the art of replacing action with aesthetics. It’s an elegant way to do nothing while convincing yourself you’re making progress. And it works—right up until the moment reality finally calls your bluff.
Cinemorphosis 
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