Magic Hour
Disney frenzy strikes at exactly 10 minutes before the closure of the park. The stores along Main Street beckon with their bright warm lights and perfectly positioned and smiling merchandise.
Your children have already fixed on what they want. A $40 light saber. A model car from Cars. Your wife has found a tie-dyed sweatshirt she’ll likely never wear outside of the place.
And then you ask yourself, while eating your third and final box of popcorn for the day: “Do I need this Goofy hat? I mean, he is my favorite character.”
No, you didn’t need the Goofy hat, and your family didn’t need any of that other stuff you invested in. But you got it anyway because that’s how we connect to that thing we’re missing in our lives. Magic.
But did you catch the word investment? Pledging allegiance to Disney (or any other corporation or brand that fills that space in our hearts) is an investment. Maintaining that feeling requires upkeep in the form of you debit card.
Whether it’s Disney, soda pop, health food grocery stores, or video games, every time we consume, so do our children. Each dollar spent in service of our obsessions goes into our kids’ psychic banks. They can draw from and add to these accounts as they get older, thus growing (or depleting) the family’s mutual fund.
The goal is to choose your investments wisely. I don’t mind a little Disney now and then so long as my children know it’s a special place and not an addiction. I want them to be savvy investors, not gamblers. I want them to still see Disney as magic, not Vegas.
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Photo by Patrícia Ferreira on Unsplash