The Prestige...

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".

We're all magicians, we just don't know it. We're all there in the midst of it all. The fun, the cohesion, the feeling of belonging, friends forever. It doesn't last. At the end of it all, one day, they'll walk up to you, smile and say, "Are you watching closely?", and in a blink of an eyelid, they'll be gone. But you will clap, and you will be amazed, because you know, that they will come back, pop in from behind and whisper "Aabracadabra". That is how it always was.

But not this time. Because the hardest part of the trick, is 'The Prestige'.  Life is the greatest magic trick of all, you never know what'll come out of the hat next. Sometimes, it is easy to make things disappear, but you can never bring it back.

We're all magicians, we just don't know it. So, "Are you watching closely?"