![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nosmallthing.net\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/swan-225x300.jpg\")
I greet most days by walking in my neighborhood with my dog.<\/p>\nI greet most days by walking in my neighborhood with my dog.<\/p>\n
She likes the routine. I do, too.<\/p>\n
I love to watch her sniff trees and examine discarded fast food wrappers. In all probability, we walked past the very same locations a couple days earlier.<\/p>\n
Nothing we come across is a surprise, but when I walk with my dog, the moment feels fresh and new.<\/p>\n
One morning this week, we passed a front yard garden behind a six-foot high wrought iron fence. I had lingered there before but don\u2019t recall being so struck by its swan-shaped planters. Each planter in the flock of three contained a single red bloom.<\/p>\n
The image made me think about fairy tales.<\/p>\n
Folk tales and myths, full of magic and mystery, before Disney streamed them into our living rooms, were told and re-told.<\/p>\n
Parents, grandparents and babysitters added their own twists. Adults took their recollections of foundational stories into adulthood. People developed their own favorites.<\/p>\n
Cinderella is supposed to be the most widely recognized fairy tale. The French version, Cendrillon, penned in the late seventeenth century by Charles Perrault, had a lot of time to build a following.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeauty and the Beast,\u201d \u201cSnow White,\u201d \u201cSleeping Beauty,\u201d \u201cLittle Red Riding Hood\u201d \u2014 there are so many fairy tales. They don\u2018t all start \u201cOnce Upon a time,\u201d and end \u201c… and they lived happily ever after.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a fairy tale, goodness usually triumphs over evil, yet casualties often occur. In an early rendering, \u201cThe Little Mermaid\u201d turns into sea foam at the end. In his story, Tom Thumb dies of a spider bite.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a long-standing tradition of telling fairy tales to young children as a way to impart moral instruction.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeauty and the Beast\u201d reminds us to look beyond physical attributes and value internal qualities of character.\u00a0 In \u201cSnow White,\u201d we\u2019re led to consider the joy in having purpose and community. In \u201cSleeping Beauty,\u201d we\u2019re reminded that true love can endure and even prove stronger than bad intentions.<\/p>\n
When I was growing up, I loved the story of Cinderella.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t raised by a wicked stepmother, but I wasn\u2019t my mother\u2019s favorite and often felt in service to my family regardless of its toll on my sense of self. I didn\u2019t feel seen.<\/p>\n
When I looked at the swan planters, I also thought about the \u201cUgly Duckling.\u201d Not that I felt odd-looking, but, and I\u2019m sure other people can relate to this, I didn\u2019t feel I belonged to the family I was born into.<\/p>\n
Much of my adult life has been about creating family-like relationships outside of the circle of people with whom I shared an address. It seems like it should be an easier thing to do, but the pull of biology in our culture is like gravity. It\u2019s hard not to want to feel seen by people who have known you all your life.<\/p>\n
Years ago, I read \u201cWomen Who Run with the Wolves,\u201d by Jungian scholar, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, an analysis of myths and fairy tales as they relate to the wild woman archetype.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an exploration of connecting with that part of you that is naturally free and confident, self-possessed and trusting of your own understanding.<\/p>\n
I thought about the purpose of fairy tales to provide moral instruction to children. I felt sad about what I perceive as a faulty understanding of happiness fairy tales convey.<\/p>\n
I suppose stories require plots and conflict and complications, but the genre places so much emphasis on pursuing future conditions and not enough about the joy of being present to the moment.<\/p>\n
By thinking \u201cif I only meet my prince,\u201d or \u201ckill the evil queen\u201d or \u201creturn to the land of my ancestors,\u201d it\u2019s easy to lose sight of the blessings in front of you NOW.<\/p>\n
I thought of this as I stared through the fence, simply enjoying a neighbor\u2019s front lawn fantasy.<\/p>\n
French poet and philosopher Paul Valery said, \u201cThe best way to make your dream come true is to wake up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knowing that happiness is not a reward for enduring hardship or a permanent \u201cever after\u201d state but is to be experienced moment by moment is no small thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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