Keep your good memories alive, consider yourself relevant through your loved ones, your struggles, achievements, privileges, and consider your life as a special story.
Own your life, failures, miseries, flaws, limitations, keep them in your locker secured, anybody trying to point them out maybe a well-wisher, and if not, they are a thief, attacking someone else’s property.
One of those moods when what is pleasure at other times, becomes insipid or indifferent…
In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself, ‘suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?’
And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, ‘No!’ At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.
All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means?
I seemed to have nothing left to live for.
It is also strangely relatable. We have all lost faith in a deeply held project at one time or another. And, politically, we are in an age of upheaval; faith in old ideals seems to be dying out, creating a vacuum.
Perhaps we can learn something about ourselves, and our political moment, by peering into my own crisis of faith.
Some part of us prefers to struggle or quest after an ideal, rather than attain it. Retirement seems to function in this way for many people: as an orienting goal but a disorienting reality.
Also, there is something disconcertingly alien about a “perfect” world.
It is part of the human condition, as that condition is normally understood, that there is some gap between how the world is and how we think it ought to be, what we have and what we want, who we are and who we would like to be.
We try to narrow this gap. But its ongoing presence is part of life as we know it. And within certain limits, we even embrace it.
In movies and literature, for instance, our favorite protagonists tend to be flawed or troubled in some way.
When a person gets everything that she wants, when she has all the things that she thinks she needs, and life is being wonderfully kind; when there is nothing terrible hanging over her head and no looming catastrophe, she might say something along the lines of “it feels just like a fairy tale.”
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Thank you …When her lucky streak is over in a day, a week, a month, a year, when life is no longer handing her everything on a silver platter, she might begin to say things like, “I should have known happiness couldn’t last” or “life just isn’t a fairy tale.”
The idea that fairy tales are all happiness is very prevalent in American society. People cling to the idea of “happy endings” and forget everything that came before it.
They say that life isn’t a fairy tale to remind us that fairy tales cannot be objectively realistic. And yet, fairy tales depict reality at a level that is rarely seen anywhere else.
Fairy tales follow a very set pattern, and that pattern almost always begins with some kind of suffering.
Fairy tales deal with the problem of life in a fallen world. There is always some darkness (poverty, ugliness, wicked stepmother, evil queen) that creates the need for a hero.
It is in times of suffering that people tend to remember that life is not a fairy tale, and yet, no fairy tale can possibly exist without suffering—in a world without suffering, there is no story, there is no triumph, there is no reason for the tale.
Do you want to add a word or two?….
The same goes for reality. The world gets really, really bad, and that is when a hero finally appears. When everything is going well, we stand around and wonder where the heroes have gone.
Another staple of fairy tales is the villain. In every fairy tale there is some incarnation of evil.
Obviously, in real life, there are not dragons walking around, there are not evil witches or ogres. There are, however, evils in the world, and if one is willing to look, those evils are almost as clear as dragons and giants.
There are monsters and tyrants. There are persons who prefer to use their power and authority to lead others astray. Dragons in fairy tales demanded tributes of innocent children to be devoured.
Today’s Culture of Death demands the lives of countless innocent children so that their parents will not be inconvenienced by them. The dragon may not be a fire breathing lizard now but the effect is virtually the same.
Your comments ….
Fairy tales remind us that we live in a fallen world, where there will always be some kind of suffering going on.
Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
There are evils, and there are ordinary everyday sorts of people who will always step into the role of hero when the time comes.
We know beyond the shadow of a doubt that there will be a hero. We know because there always has been a hero.
The progress shows that all concessions yet made have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence.
It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
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