Today is not my birthday, as by some mystery I just happen to have been born on Juneteenth. Most of you won’t even know what Juneteenth is, or why I might choose to let my birthday play second fiddle to a sense of history. So here is your chance to find out.

Might I also point out, that the celebrations of this day are slightly early. There still exists across this planet not just prejudice, but genuine slavery still to be abolished. We needn’t look only at history and feel smug that we people of the enlightened future are superior.

People can’t even phone each other back, let alone achieve worldwide emancipation.

Self-emancipation is the most repeated phrase in the communist manifesto. If you haven’t read it, you’ll have to take my word for it. Oh, and by the way, Engels inspiration was the slums of Manchester. England. A first world nation.

Paul Harris wrote the ‘Art of Astonishment’. He is a magician who took the magic world by storm in the 70s and now works quietly behind the scenes. When his house burned down, he packed everything into a car and lived life light of heart. Magic can do that. That is ultimately its life-changing power. The ability to whip up a living with nothing but a coin or a pebble or some paper and a pen. That samurai level of preparedness. The zen of studying only to throw away the secrets and ‘make it up as you go along’.

He recently gave away $30,000 to a relative stranger. He did it as an act of self-astonishment. That’s also an act of self-emancipation.

, originally uploaded by DaveSinclair.