The Secret Garden

Ever since I was a child, "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett has been one of my favourite books. It's been a few years since I read it last so I decided to read it again. I never realized before how full of the freedom feeling it is. The whole story is actually about children growing up and becoming well again by chasing after the freedom feeling in their secret garden. I just read a bit and  I can't resist copying a couple parts down here. It is so perfect. Burnett doesn't call it the "freedom feeling" like I do, but instead refers to it as "being quite sure that you are going to live forever and ever and ever" or "Magic."

"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising sun -- which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one's eyes."
"'Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden -- in all the places.'" - Colin Craven
-Frances Hodgson Burnett