I've probably read this line over and over again.More so, when I was a child.
The books I come across nowadays don't have such endings. And if they do,it's only to usher in a huge plot twist.
Well, I guess the reality is that princesses don't always get saved. The prince isn't always brave enough to wander into unknown territories and find a kidnapped princess in a locked tower. And I mean with the security detail accorded to nobilities, the heir to the throne would most definitely not dance with an unknown young lady even though their dress was embroidered by forest birds and common mice.
So what happened then? Were the fairy tales we were ever so fond of as we grew up, mere fantasies or an old man's daydream?
"Into the woods". You'd think would be your usual betrayal of original thought, whereby usually the classics are retold in every possible imaginable and unimaginable way. But the realistic approach of the movie in regards to the classic fairy tales was pretty thrilling.
Prince Charming is depicted as an overly egoistic young prince, and even states that "I was raised to be charming not sincere" . Coming to think of it, I don't know how we could overlook such a cheesy name. How could we expect a loving,faithful,kingly ,father-of-children type of character from someone who bears such a name.
Judging by his name and no doubt his actions, he's just your average,down the block Casanova. A smooth-talking charmer who has mastered the art of finding,meeting and seducing women.And as far as we know from the Cinderella story,all the billion versions of it,is that the only noble thing he did was to overlook the 'lowly' status of Cindie. But she was born an aristocrat,so I take that back no nobility there!
Well, searching the Kingdom for a girl he met at a ball,with only a glass slipper as his aid was awfully sweet and a whole lot more than the average bloke would be willing to do,to find the girl of his dreams.
And, C'mon, really Cindie your life long dream was to marry the prince.And then what. What kind of King would he have made anyway.A lousy one,if you ask me. Instead of sitting by his father's throne and learning the tricks of the trade he's busy causing an uproar in the villages about a shoe and a girl who's name he didn't even have the courtesy of finding out, yet they danced together till midnight.
I must sound really bitter.
The movie also depicts,Rapunzel as overly irrational. Apparently the reason she gets locked up in the first place is because her father stole greens from the witch's garden for his overly demanding pregnant wife or that the witch wanted the gift of everlasting beauty which was derived from Rapunzel's magical hair so she stole the child from her royal parents. Like I said,too many versions.
The interesting thing about Rapunzel's story is that despite the tower being only slightly less tall than probably Burj Khalifa the prince is the only one who happened to cross it. And what's even more astonishing is that he's the only who took an interest in her overly long hair.
And there's little red riding hood,Overly inquisitive and hopelessly naive.And why does her grandmother live alone in the woods? And what kind of parent sends their child across infamous woods,knowing fully well that there's a devious talking wolf who's a master of disguise.Let's not even take a look at Jack and the beanstalk, the original version I mean. The recent depiction was rather good.Overly,overly I need to stop using that word.
I'd like to focus on my previous two examples and such like stories. The one's with princes and princesses because I think we'd all agree their fanatics, who were the child versions of ourselves ,all took home a life long message and it somehow molded our view on topics such as love and relationships.
Now,I'm only 19,and I wish not to go all Dr.Phil meets Oprah on you about a topic I'm only discovering myself. Furthermore, I'm no psychologists or sociologist. But this was sparked by an interesting observation I made when watching,"He's not that into you". Yes I watch a lot,A LOT. And yes they highly contribute to destabilizing my thinking and plunging me into this deep well of sorts, of thoughts and fantasy.
I had a very feminine childhood. That sounds odd.Okay let's try girly. I had a very girly childhood. Okay,it doesn't sound completely right,but I guess it will have to do for now. My childhood was characterized by fairy tales and dolls. I didn't think much of it really, until I watched that movie and realized how many of my notions about love,relationships and those of the less fair sex were shaped by or based on these fairy tales.And what was even more interesting was that I wasn't the only one. Tens of thousands of girls had these fairy tale notions too.The number may be a tad bit exaggerated.
I'm told when I'm trying to put a point across,I tend to explain myself a lot,like a whole lot more than is necessary.
Well,I shall not disprove their observation and disown my true self.
Let's go back to Cindie's story,shall we?
Cinderella lived a trying life,the death of her parents,the cruel reign of her evil stepmother and the constant taunt and ridicule of her ugly-hearted sisters.I say this because I think the nature of their souls had more to do with how they treated Cindie than their physical appearance. In the same way we're all a little broken,somehow in some way. It sounds awfully tragic,but we all bare the burden of something deep and dark within ourselves something that clouded our days or did cloud our days. Something that only some are privileged to say that they overcame and has cost them no sunny day ever since.Somehow,in some way we've all experienced pain.
So for one night,Cinderella got to be this mystery,this radiant mystery. She got to put on a dress and some fancy glass slippers. And for that one night,she got to be something she was not or perhaps she was but she didn't know it. She got a day in the life of someone else,as some would say.She alone knew who she was and knew her story,and the unexplainable turn of events that enabled her to be at the ball that night.
And the overwhelming pleasure of being in such a gown,or in the King's palace was not all that her lucky stars had to offer.Forget the mummer and the awe of the aristocrats who were present that night.
There was the Prince.
Ah,the Prince. A dashing young man,who would soon have the command of armies and the Kingdom's folk at his feet. That night he had eyes for no other,not the daughters of Kings of far away lands,nor the fair maidens who lived within the territories his fathers ruled over.
He danced not just with her,but only with her as if her aura was an exquisite aged wine and he was a hopeless drunk.
He saw her.
And until the clock struck midnight,she did not care that he saw this version of herself. The version that was pruned and primed and made worthy to stand in his presence.She felt that night, that his eyes looked into her soul and saw something,she didn't know existed in herself.
A light,a glowing light. That blinded him and until she left he was unable to see or feel anything else around him. When she ran across the palace grounds,he longed once again to be lost in the glare of that light and be drowned by her presence.He perhaps felt peaceful and that is why when she left he knew he would only feel alive again if he found her.
She ran as fast as she could down the palace steps and into the openness afraid.Afraid. He would see her. He hadn't fallen for her true self he had fallen for how the embroidery,pattern and fabric of the dress accentuated her youthful body and how her stray locks of hair had been fastened upon her head.And how her cleansed face glowed.
He could and would never love,one who sat by the cinders and who's face was constantly darkened by soot. Who served at her 'master's' table and lived at the mercy and will of her dark souled family.
If he knew,he would be disgraced.She was filthy,incapable of being loved,let alone by the prince.But she secretly found delight in the radiant gown and it's ability to be the envy of a common thief,pulling of the greatest heist in the land.Stealing the heart of the prince.
She thought their magical encounter was a wild play of her imagination and that the prince took no note of it.After all he had danced with many others before, more stunning and noble than herself that night.After all,that was the work of a fairy godmother nothing like who she was usually. Her place was not at balls but in the kitchen, not shrugging shoulders with the mighty but in the company of church mice and other creatures who happened to crawl around in the filth she cleaned.
She did get her happily ever after.The prince and the castle. And it had nothing to do with the gown.It had everything to do with a soul connection,he had dared to look into her soul and in his recklessness,he lost his heart and it left him with a void that could only be filled by she who had shared that blissful night with him.
It's all beautiful,really.
It's no wonder that those tens of females I spoke to you about earlier,live for this promise of a happy ever after.That,that deep connection of souls leads to a happy ever after.It is a rare occurrence where one is stripped oh,so lovingly of their guise.The guise that we put on everyday in order to face the world and shield ourselves from injury,the emotional kind.
It is stripped,and there we're left with only our bare souls,our true selves.And for another to love this bare, true version of ourselves is truly magical.It's also a huge form of validation that we are capable of love and loving another .And what's more is the amazing feeling of being loved and equally loving another.For someone to overlook all that we're not and embrace all that we are.
I spoke about females but in truth,we've all read and re-read and watched and re-watched the fairy tales. But what then creates the difference in our perception of love and relationships? and why is it so heavily dependent on our biology?
For instance why are females known to building fantasies and creating our very own happy ever after receiving only subtle gestures of fondness made by a member of the opposite sex .Why are females known to express more affection and often are the ones who love more in a relationship and equally insist on holding together a relationship? It is because we are blatantly fixated on the idea of a happy ever after,that shall be obtained at all costs.In the modern world,it is not our sole ambition but it still remains a key and primary one.
Of,course this isn't the gospel truth and doesn't represent the ideas or the ideologies of an entire species of those whose origins are said to be in Venus.Neither does it clump guys up as unemotional savages.
But really think about it,and you will find some truth to it.Or maybe you won't.
A zebra,white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
Oh c'mon,at least give me some credit for effort.
We really did believe in those fairy tales as kids,didn't we?
In fact,we lived by them.
Innocently and sub-consciously.
Little boys wanted to be like the brave heroic knights and girls wanted to be the dainty little princesses.
Or at least I did.
I wanted to be a lot of things, though.
But have you ever thought about it,little boys wanted to be heroic knights and if at the end of their conquests they married the King's daughter,well and good.
But many little boys didn't think much about it,they thought about the sword fights and slaying the dragons and defending the Kingdom against the savages or at least the neighbor's son in the meantime.
I'm currently watching Game of Thrones so you will see the word savages and Kingdoms a lot.
I know,I know you probably watched it,before the pilot episode was aired.
No one wanted to be the prince if it didn't mean,fighting on horseback or something daring and dangerous. No one wanted to dance at the ball,with this girl with an identity crisis,or climb up a tower with a girl's golden locks.
So what happened. We read the same fairy tales, didn't we?
Or is it as William Blake put it in reference to the Bible,"Thou read black,where I read white?"
They didn't want to be the prince then, so whatever makes us think they want to be the prince now?
I was watching Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Ted talk the other day and it really helped me understand that the disparity of our perception of love,relations with the opposite gender has little to do with our biology but has more to do with what our minds were fed as we grew up.
She states that "We do a great deservice to boys on how we raise them,We stifle the humanity of boys.We define masculinity in a very narrow way,and it becomes this small hard cage,and we put boys inside the cage.We teach boys to bee afraid of fear,of weakness and of vulnerability.We teach them to mask themselves,because they have to be in Nigerian speak,'hard man''
This greatly explains why then,the little boys wouldn't want to be those fairy tale princes when they grew up.They weren't the image of masculinity that they were taught to revere at least the sons raised in an African setting. Love creates a form of vulnerability in oneself and as they had learnt vulnerability is weakness.And weakness is shunned. None of them wanted to be perceived as weak.
"I see when men love women,they give but a piece of their lives
But women when they love they give everything"
-Oscar Wilde.
It is no wonder that these little boys who later grow up,become so guarded and extensive expressions of love and affection are more so a show of wealth than they are a celebration of that wondrous feeling.
What happens then?
A tornado meets an active and erupting volcano.Each posses immense potency.Different but equally immense potency.
A boy meets a girl.A girl meets a boy.
This collision of ideologies so deeply rooted creates a supernova.
As per it's definition,A supernova is a stellar explosion that briefly outshines an entire galaxy,
radiating as much energy as the sun or any ordinary star is expected to emit over its entire lifespan,before fading from view over several weeks and months.
A supernova,I couldn't have found a more accurate word.
Relationships.
There's the advent of them all,My friend and I call it 'The window period". It's the period of a soul connection.It's as if your hearts beat in rhythm and the other sings the song in your heart that you thought only you knew the words.
The feeling is overwhelming,enchanting and just like Prince Charming you are blinded by the light in the other's soul that you become withdrawn to the events happening around you.
The power of love shines from your faces like sun beams.
Then wears of.Over several weeks or months.
A supernova is a collision after all.
A collision of two souls,two beings,two mind sets.
And this is not the rule.Nor is it the exception.
But it is also a collision of the princess and the dragon slayer.
Their initial childhood forms.
Then the expectations set in,the greatest destroyer of that,that was once beautiful,innocent and budding.
Love in it's purest form can be understated as when someone's happiness is your own and in my opinion is the most amazing emotion we humans posses.
She wanted a prince,the kind she had always read about. He's not sure what he wants,girls didn't feature much in those heroic tales of conquest.
The once beautiful collision turns destructive.
A destruction of two souls,two beings.
But here comes the twist.Not a destruction of the mind sets.
The relationship fizzles out,and she continues in search of her Prince just as the fairy tales had promised while he journeys on in his wars of conquest still trying to figure out the place of a girl in his own heroic tale.And if he hails from an uncontaminated African context one who will serve and be loyal and tend to his children.
From a barbarian,early human point of view.The woman was generally fashioned to aspire and to eventually settle down and have a family. This was her sole purpose.
This was an interesting explanation,I heard once when someone asked why women tend to be supposedly "clingy". She was meant to align herself to one man and have a family.Period.So emotions and such deep feelings of affection are accepted.
So does this mean the fairy tales were wrong.
Or is it that we read and understood them differently.
The brave men who fought in combat and triumphed over armies are the same who danced with princesses at the ball.It all depended on which story one was required by society to learn.
They say the greatest love stories are not those of Romeo and Juliet but those of the 80 year old grandfather who's still hopelessly in love with his childhood sweetheart.
Endurance? or True love?
I think love in it's innocent and purest form.
Their supernova did not cause destruction but created something even better something even more enduring.
Perhaps, then it is only some relationships that are supernovas.
Like I said,I'm no expert.
But what if we were to love and love unconditionally bareness?
Bareness.
Bareness of the soul.
To see the light in others and act as if that's all we see.
We are all flawed.But each human is endowed equally with such beauty.
The difference in the so called 'good people' and the so called'bad people'
Is the side that was cultivated.Either by the person himself/herself or by others.
Regardless,just like the yin and yang circle, the black is needed to make it complete.
What if we express a carefree love, one that's not determined by other's opinions,or by another's flaws or shortcomings?
Or by expectations?
What if we were to allow our souls to be nude,and not always in cages?
To let those we connect to,see our true selves?
If we were to love the other, on the basis that they're human?
If we were to show them goodness,kindness,mercy,compassion and love on the basis that they are human?
And If we only remembered that to show them this,would not be a depiction of their character but a depiction of our own.
Perhaps then the fairy tales wouldn't be so far fetched
and we'd all have our very own happy ever after.
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