11. Magical Moments

Have you ever gotten a parking spot, right up front, at the busy grocery store? Or maybe you’ve been running late for an appointment and you hit every green light. Kate Kennedy, host of the Be There In Five podcast, calls those magical moments. Kate is here to remind us that sometimes the universe DOES align just for us, and when it does, we should savor it. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

I’m Nora McInerny, and it’s going to be okay.

On days when I am particularly overwhelmed, I find a lot of comfort in listening to other people talk. And one of my favorite people to listen to is Kate Kennedy….

Kate Kennedy: Hi, this is Kate Kennedy from the “Be There in Five” podcast.

Kate’s podcast is comforting to me because it’s just her beautiful voice … talking. About pop culture, sometimes. About the millennial experience sometimes. About her own life sometimes. And Kate has a way of capturing moments that I don’t always notice myself, and I don’t know if other people notice, either, which is why I asked her to be here today. 

Kate Kennedy: I don’t know exactly what to call this, but you know when you’re with a friend, a family member, and something goes your way, and then you spend the rest of the time instead of just, like, being present and doing the thing you were going to do, you talk about and reinforce how great it is that something went your way. 

Let me give you a couple examples. I was going to a very nice restaurant that we did not have a reservation for with a group of girlfriends for a friend’s 40th. We didn’t have reservations. We didn’t think we’d get in. We certainly would never get a table on the patio. Are you kidding me? Al fresco is only, you know, saved for the best and brightest. There happened to be two open stools in the corner of this window section at the end of the restaurant, at the bar, and we put up to two more stools in that corner. We ended up having the best seats in the house and watching the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. We were sequestered to the bar because we couldn’t get a reservation, but turns out most of the restaurant you couldn’t– there was no view at all. And we had truly the best seat in the house. People were behind us, like taking photos of the sunset. I couldn’t even believe that we had better seats than people that had made these reservations months in advance. 

So what did we do? Enjoy our time there? Yeah, sure, sure. But we were so excited about it– by the stroke of luck. It was one of those magical moments in life where even though, you know, this is truly not the case and the universe does not care about you that much, it just feels like a time when the planets and the fates and all the stars align, and we all ended up at the in the same room at the same time, got the most magical experience for our friend’s birthday. And even though we know that’s just a coincidence, in that moment, it feels like it was divinely designed for our enjoyment. And there’s something about sitting in that delusion that’s so incredibly satisfying. 

So were we present? Did we have fun and talk about other things? Kinda. But we mostly spent two and a half hours talking about how excited we were to be in that corner of the bar in those four seats looking out at the sunset when money couldn’t buy this view elsewhere. We just felt so damn lucky. 

You know, when something just happens, you’re like, “Wow, I can’t believe how well that worked out for me,” half the fun is that it worked out. The other half the fun is running it into the ground by talking about it nonstop. And I think there’s something really fun that I’ve experienced in a group of women specifically, or in a pair, where you’re both just really into talking about how great something is over and over and over, and the repetition doesn’t seem to bother you. The same goes with traveling with friends to a new city, new to a new place, and having an understanding that we will spend the next 48 hours talking about how cute everything is – every cobblestone, every goddamn alley. May tiny string bulbs light the way. 

Nora Ephron once famously said one of the things she’ll miss the most in life is dinners with friends in cities where none of us lives. And that’s kind of a similar idea, because when it’s somewhere new, when it’s somewhere you haven’t been, sometimes it’s a magical moment of everything aligning, sometimes just being in a new place. But for me, it’s being around people that just love to indulge in the celebration of your environment, your circumstances, and the raw gratitude of being together in a beautiful place and just really enjoying that moment to the point where you’re not even looking back on that moment with gratitude, you know, in it, it’s too damn good and you have to talk about it right then and there like it’s urgent. 

And I’m here to celebrate anybody else’s magical moments. Did you score a deal? Happen upon a ticket at face value for a sold out show? Did you find the last parking spot, and it was in the front, allowing you to, against all odds, get somewhere on time that you were going to be very late for? Tell me everything! I would love to hear you retell that story for a calendar year. 

My mom and I used to travel far and wide to the outlets for sale. Whether it was to go to a farther away Macy’s, Hecht’s, Dillard’s, Belk that was less picked over, Burlington Coat Factory in a town where people have not gotten the memo that it’s more than just great coats, or driving hours to the outlets. What I remember about those times is not the material goods I acquired, but the memories I hold on to, because what did we do with the whole 45-minute ride home from Colonial Williamsburg? We just talked over and over about the deals we scored, the way we worked the system, the way it’s a bank holiday, but we’re the ones that made bank, and we’d relish in the high of scoring a deal. And no one could tell us to calm down or that we already said that or that it’s not a big deal. It’s just fun to be excited about something and in the company of someone who also loves to be excited. 

Loving a thing that just happened and obsessing over it in real time together is a favorite pastime of mine that, to me, represents gratitude in its most pure form. Long story short, I can make a laundry list of all the things that don’t go our way in life. But the few and far between times that they do, even though it’s usually more chill to be humble when things go our individual way, something about magical moments experienced as a group that are celebrated ad nauseum in real time, those moments make me feel like it’s going to be okay.

I also love these magical moments. I love what they can create among us. My kids are still talking about a trip to Culvers where they spun a wheel and won a whole pint of custard, which they then pronounced “pent,” and still refer to as a “pent” of custard, and I’m done correcting them. I think “pent” is a fine way to describe it.  

And if I didn’t share in a magical moment with you, I still want to hear about it! It’s going to be okay is an independent podcast from the independent podcast production company Feelings & Co. You can support our work by listening, thank you, by rating and reviewing and sharing the episode, and, maybe most important by telling us what your okay thing is. That “it” in “It’s Going to Be OK” changes. It changed for me every day. I want to know what yours is. You can record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us – our email address is linked in the show notes – or you can write the email and I’ll read it. Or you can call us: 612.568.4441.

Our team is Megan Palmer, Claire McInerny, Marcel Malekebu, Jordan Turgeon, Larissa Witcher and Eugene Kidd. Our theme music is by Secret Audio.