When the night is dark and quiet, my open heart expects a miracle

By David McElroy · June 22, 2026

There are two men who live inside me.

One man is the most rational person you know. He’s deeply logical and focused on objective reality. Just the facts. This man wants to have his affairs in order and live in ways he can be proud of. He wants to be a good man above all.

But there’s another man inside of me, too. That man is deeply emotional. He believes in magic. He trusts his intuition. He values love and connection above all. He would do anything for the right kind of love.

There are times when the hyper-rational man is in charge. He gets a lot of things done. He’s hard-working and he’s capable. Many people admire him for being smart and reasonable.

But there are times when my heart is open and there seems to be a portal open to some sort of fantastic world of wonder instead. And when that man is in charge, he feels like taking risks and making magic happen — if he just knew which magical words to say.

He’s waiting for something inexplicable to happen. Any moment now.

It’s not like being Jekyll and Hyde. It’s not like being bipolar. It’s more like being Mr. Day and Mr. Night, twins who share my brain. During the day, the hyper-rational man calls the shots. But when it’s dark — especially in the wee hours of the morning and everything’s quiet — it’s Mr. Night who takes over.

And that emotional man is waiting for some sort of magic to happen any moment — something he can’t even name.

Mr. Night keeps me awake.

Even when I try to get to sleep early — as I have for the past few nights — I still end up awake at 3 in the morning resisting sleep. I usually have the vague sense that if I just stay awake a few more minutes — or another hour or whatever — I’ll finally find something vital that’s always just barely out of my grasp.

It always feels as though I’m looking for something just below the surface of consciousness — and some part of me believes it will show up any moment now.

What is Mr. Night waiting for? I can’t say. Not exactly.

Maybe it’s an email from someone out of the past. Maybe it’s a wildly unexpected phone call from someone I haven’t met yet, someone who’s fallen in love with me. Maybe it’s an invitation to be part of something exciting that might change my life.

To the hyper-rational man, all of this is nonsense. Of course none of those things are going to happen. There’s nobody out there thinking about me that I don’t know about. Nobody has noticed me and wants me to be part of some big project. There’s nobody who has the irrational notion of wanting to love me.

Even Mr. Night knows that these things — and even more fantastical things that he’s afraid to name clearly — are in the realm of pure fantasy. He knows they’re not going to happen. He knows they don’t make sense. He knows that when the light of morning comes, the rational man will laugh at him and ridicule his naivety.

But Mr. Night believes anyway. He keeps expecting a miracle. His heart beats a little faster as he asks himself whether this might be the day when the impossible shows up in his life.

We like to believe we are fully integrated creatures with one unitary voice in command, but I know that isn’t true.

I know it isn’t true because science tells me so. (If you really want to know the science behind the parts of our minds that compete for inner control — and which sometimes can’t even communicate with one another — read “Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite,” from Princeton University Press.) But I also know there’s no unitary voice in charge because Mr. Day and Mr. Night live inside my head.

In another eight hours or so, the rational man will be in charge again. I’ll be back to acting like the completely logical and pragmatic man who most people know me to be. He’s steady and he’s reliable.

But for now, the night is dark and everything is silent.

The portal to possibility is open. All things seem possible. And without really even wanting to, I’m waiting for some sort of magic.

I’m waiting — and hoping — for something to happen. Something I can’t even name.

Share on Social Networks

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

Related Posts