Simply Magic
Allowing truth to transform you into you
I have finished Simply Magic, by Mary Balogh it was an interesting read to get through, I will be getting into a few of the thoughts that occurred to me while reading this book, in the spoiler section ahead.
As far as the book goes, it felt a bit forced at times, not as compelling as the second one, Simply Love, but truly enjoyable nonetheless.
So, let’s get started.
The story begins in the middle of the previous one, Susanna is invited by her friend to spend a few weeks with her, and during her visit she meets Peter, a charming viscount.
She recognizes him as someone with the name Edgeworth, who is connected to her past, which makes her reject him instinctively.
As the time passes, they get to know one another, like one another, spend an intimate afternoon together and say good bye, despite being in love.
They meet again, he offers marriage, she refuses, and they say goodbye again.
As destiny would have it, they meet yet another time, and this time they confess their love after each of them goes through a transformation, and they decide to get married.
There's obviously a lot more detail to their story, and it's well worth the read.
First, Peter comes across as an immature boy, running away from his home because he is unable to face his narcissistic mother and take charge of his life. He is however, kind and speaks from the heart, something that helps Sussanna eventually.
She is joyful and happy, but orderly and practical, very literal in her dealings, guards her emotions and has been running away from her painful past for years.
The first contrast that one notices is her literal mindedness to his passionate way of speaking (or thinking). Despite it sounding as if they'd be incompatible, it actually works quite well. It's as if his presence in her life, and his poetic soul, gave speech to the voice of her heart.
This matters because she's a logical person for whom choices need to be made because of reasons, coldly and calculated, and he is more of a dreamer. She needed him to hear her dreams, to listen to the parts that her logical brain would quiet down, and reflect those back to her, in order for her to hear her own dreams.
It made me think of the limbic resonance idea, when in the presence of others, we can resonate with their beings, which allows us to hear ourselves, to realize who we are or could be, and what we may not know about ourselves.
It was a lovely idea, that his role in her life, was to give her heart a voice, whether it was to aid in the search for joy and love, or to express the hurts and wounds of the past. Without him, she was unable to accept love, she had grown too literal and cold, she had grown too expectant of hurt, after her father took his own life and she interpreted this as him choosing death over her, so she hardened,
but with that refusal of love, she was also unable to give it. She needed to hear her heart speak so that she would be able to receive and give love.
How many of us have been there?
Living with hurts and wounds from our past that inform our personality, in ways that have us living as if we were being cheated on constantly, or betrayed, or hurt or abandoned, or lied to.
There's something to be said about not being naive in our dealings with the world, and of course, however, our reaction to life should not be as unconscious as the naive ignorance that got us in trouble in the first place.
Susanne’s role in his life was to reflect back upon him his own childishness and cowardice, she literally tells him that he needs a dragon to slay, to stop running away from responsibility and adulthood, and take charge of his life and estate.
He truly needed to hear those words, he already knew what he wanted out of life, he simply was too kind to go get it, but it was cowardice disguising itself as kindness and supposed consideration.
And, again, how many of us have been there? hiding our true selves, and denying our destinies behind kindness, behind being nice? how many of us have held on to our self image and have sacrificed so much for the fear of being perceived as unkind?
This does not mean to be a chronically honest person by any means, or to become rude, but as with Susanna and being naive, being kind should proceed with the same level of consciousness and awareness. Much like distrust, kindness should not proceed as a by default reaction, because we risk much by it.
His dragon to slay was his mother, who was a perfect narcissist, very nicely depicted too by the way, who controlled and smoldered him to no end.
It was very interesting how this took place, his weapon of choice against his dragon was the truth about her bitterness when Susanna's father ended an affair they had started, a bitterness that lead her to threaten Sussanna's father with ruin, and thus lead to his death.
With this truth, he not only regained control of his life, and mastery over his existence, but he also demolished the idea he had within himself of who his mother was, which was a great way to describe fighting our dragons. We not only attack something out there, we also attack that something's presence within us. That's how you fight a dragon, with truth towards yourself first and foremost.
In short, this was a story about being wrong, Susanna had to admit that her father did not choose death over her, he chose to sacrifice his life to ensure her wellbeing, to the best of his ability, wrong perhaps, but it was all he had to offer her at the time and with his limitations, it’s how far he was willing to go.
She was wrong about being unworthy and incapable of love, or about being unloved all her life. She was wrong and once she allowed this truth within, she became who she was. Truth is transformative.
Peter was wrong, about himself and his mother, he thought that his kindness was all he needed to be who he was, being liked by others was enough, so he lavished everyone with compliments, but he had not done anything about himself that emanated from within and as such, he did not like himself.
He had to do something that went against his personality in order to find something solid and permanent that he could like, and not only like and feel proud of, but also offer to her and the rest of the world.
He gave her heart a voice and she opened his eyes to his destiny, and with the truth that she felt and heard from within, and the one that he saw and acted upon, they found themselves reinventing their lives and one another, as friends, lovers, and husband and wife.
Thank you for reading.