Greetings from all of us here at Serenity Now.
I was blessed enough to be guided to watch a program on the 50th anniversary of Disney. Visionaries have always fascinated me and Walt Disney in particular has a special place in my heart. For him to see swampland in Florida, and visualize Disney World, is putting the imagination into overdrive.
I saw this special on October 1st 2021, of course the opening date of Disney was October 1st, 1971. One particular segment fascinated me. The gentleman who was responsible for bringing Epcot Center into existence was Tony Baxter. He is one of the second generations of Disney Visionaries, because by this time Walt had made his transition.
Tony said he wanted to honor Walt’s vision, and the challenges that he faced were more than he thought he could handle.
One of the difficulties was that he was looking for a mascot to represent the theme park. One day he happened to be watching an episode of Magnum PI (dear Universe, thank you for how easy Tom Selleck is on the eyes; my words not his). In this episode Magnum was hiding a goat from Higgins in the bushes of the estate. I don’t know if you remember or not, but Higgins was the character played by the actor John Hillerman, who was the bossy and angry at all times caretaker of the estate. Of course the first thing Higgins does is hear the goat, and then sees him. Magnum tries to feign innocence, but of course he has been caught red handed.
Higgins put his foot down and says a goat on the premises in unacceptable and follows by saying, “I have seen the creature with my own eyes. I know he is not a ‘figment of my imagination’”.
The minute Tony Baxter heard this sentence he knew he had his mascot for the soon to be opening theme park. Some of you who have been to Epcot might be familiar with the little purple dragon, Figment, that kind of looks like a goat, and plays a big part of representing the park. Of course Epcot is all about imagination.
After I heard this story I thought it was such a beautiful manifestation of the statement; “the Universe is rigged in our favor”. It seemed completely random for him to watch a TV show that gave him inspiration to create a character who inspired millions of people for many years. Almost like the answer he was looking for was delivered to him on a silver platter.
Hearing this gave me hope that the same Universe is working on our behalf.
