Some weeks after the runaway bestseller “The Secret” became the rage, I was flipping channels and heard Oprah Winfrey glowing about it. I guess James Frey’s million itsy bitsy pieces didn’t teach her a lesson. But whether a breakthrough or a scam, I figured it was time for me to find out what The Secret was. So I borrowed a friend’s video of “The Secret.”

Here is how it works. The “scientific” theory is that you attract what you wish for – actually physically attract it. It goes way beyond the power of positive thinking. With straight faces, The Secret’s proponents claim that the phenomenon is as scientifically provable and powerful as electricity. It is a secret that all the great people in history have known. In a nutshell, the theory claims you get what you wish for if you wish for it hard enough. The video shows a kid pining for a bicycle, looking at it in the bicycle store. And, sure enough, he gets it. We repeatedly see a beautiful young woman lusting after an expensive necklace displayed in a store window. And, sure enough, she gets it.

Now we all know, don’t we, that the kid nagged the hell out of his parents until they bought the bicycle for him? And we all know, don’t we, what the young woman did to get some man to buy her the necklace?

OK, perhaps the author and filmmaker – a reality TV show producer by trade – shortchanged The Secret’s deeper message in her choice of visuals. One would hope that most dream seekers would focus not on objects to acquire but on meaningful accomplishments. What’s missing from both the book and the video – we critics love to point out – is the hard work required to realize our dreams. You don’t wish hard to become an Olympic figure skater and presto turn into one. You work your butt off, training and practicing many hours per day. You don’t dream of writing a novel and suddenly have it magically appear in the bookstore. You can work an entire lifetime to get to that point. I did. And take it from me, writing the book was the easy part compared to finding a publisher.

So, The Secret is a bunch of baloney, right?

Well, I would dismiss it out of hand if it hadn’t happened to me – once, twice, actually three times. The first was the miracle of my daughter. She turned out to be exactly what I wished for. The second experience involved a herd of buffalo. The third time was right here in Lawrence last fall.

On my trip to Lawrence in August to scout housing, I had closed my eyes on the plane and thought hard about the house I hoped to find. I fantasized about what I would say if a real estate agent asked me what I was looking for. I would say that I wanted an old stone cottage resembling one I’d once rented in the mountains of France, a little farmhouse on the side of a steep hill surrounded by wild vegetation. It had a rustic wooden open staircase leading to a sleeping loft. As I daydreamed on the plane, I envisioned this stone cottage to be in one of the neighborhoods in East or Old West Lawrence within walking distance of downtown but surrounded by dense English style gardens to give it privacy. I actually chuckled to myself about how outlandish and unrealistic my dream was.

Having not sold my home back in Washington, D.C., I would have to rent in the beginning. While there were lots of interesting houses for sale in Lawrence, the rental market was another thing. Over the next week, I dragged around in sticky 104-degree heat, looking at house after house in neighborhood after neighborhood. I saw dozens of homes, each one worse than the last. Many were rundown, dirty, needing major repairs. If anyone in officialdom is listening, try pretending to be a potential renter and look at what’s out there. You’ll be shocked. I guess landlords figure students will accept anything. But I was not a student, and I was not about to accept living in a dump. By the end of the week, I was in despair. Maybe this moving to Lawrence was a really bad idea.

Then I saw an ad for a 150-year-old stone farmhouse. It was out in the country – not exactly what I wanted – but it couldn’t hurt to look at it. What else did I have to do? The minute I drove up to it, I realized it was exactly the house I’d dreamed up on the plane. How could it be possible? That had merely been a daydream to distract me from my fear of flying. But here it was. True, it was out in the country, not in Lawrence. But how can you pass up a house that you saw in your dream?

So I sit typing away within these thick comforting limestone walls. Outside my window are a profusion of green and a kaleidoscope of visitors: cardinals, rabbits, deer, opossum and two adorable baby raccoons. It was the right choice – spiders, musty basement and all. I’m not going to tell you where it is. That is “My Secret.”

But sometime I’ll tell you about a special herd of buffalo in New Mexico.