Happily ever after?
THERE IS GOOD, THERE IS EVIL, THERE IS RELEVANCE TO OUR LIVES TODAY – SHARON BLACKIE REFLECTS ON THE WISDOM TO BE FOUND IN FAIRYTALES
We’re storytelling animals, hard-wired for it; it’s obvious in the innate storytelling capacity we’re born with. In pretend play, toddlers create uniquely plotted dramas, populating them with people and animals, pitching their voices differently for each character. Their play-acting isn’t all polite chit-chat: sometimes it’s positively existential – just like fairytales.
We begin to perceive and make sense of the world through the stories we hear in childhood and their lessons are deep and rich. Anywhere, there may be a door to another world: learn to look for it. Always leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find your way out of the dark wood. Don’t maim yourself trying to fit into the glass slipper that was made for someone else.
The characters are great teachers, too. Think of Eliza, the heroine of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Wild Swans’, who had to pluck stinging nettles with her bare hands, spin yarn from their fibre, and weave a shirt for each of her brothers to redeem them from the spell of their wicked stepmother, who had transformed them into swans. Tolerate the blistered hands, it whispers: out of the pain, magic is born.
In fairytales, the tasks that must be undertaken are often the stuff out of which souls, not just shirts, are forged. As the hero or heroine leaves home to set off on an uncharted journey and face seemingly impossible challenges, they’re led ultimately to develop their highest potential. The essential ingredient of these stories is transformation. We’re taught to believe in the possibility of change: Cinderella transforming into a princess; the ugly duckling becoming a swan. We come to see that there are other ways of imagining the world and our place in it – and of living more intensely, and more richly, in a world that is always going to be filled with challenge, and sorrow.
The best fairytales offer us a more enriching set of values to live by, and remind us that, tucked up safe in the rambling, roundabout lines between ‘Once upon a time…’ and ‘…happily ever after’, lie the secrets for a meaningful, sustainable life. Like the story of the great cow of plenty, whose milk flow was so abundant she travelled the land, giving her creamy milk to anyone who needed it. But when a wicked person tried to take more than her share, the magical cow disappeared for ever from the face of the earth.
Nature plays an important role in fairytales; animals often have something unexpected to teach us, trees and plants can save or cure us. That sense of awe, of connection, of belonging to a mysterious world, which has many depths and layers to explore, is missing in so much of contemporary life and stories can serve to remind us of this.
Although they’re often cast as mere entertainment for children, these stories are perfectly relevant to adults today. They’re founded on the challenges and concerns that make up our daily lives, and show us solutions to our problems, which we might not have considered. New ways to outwit a monster; new strategies for survival. And as long as we don’t try to take them literally – like all such stories, they’re intended to be magical and metaphorical – they can speak to our longing for a deeper connection. (The archetypes can soon dissolve into cliché when they become so familiar and stereotypical – women, for example, can often find themselves cast in the role of the ‘wicked stepmother’.)
Stories reflect the old ways of knowing that are still written in our bones: which tell us we are part of the great web of life on this planet – that we belong here – and that the black-feathered wisdom of a crow, or the transformational power of a stinging nettle, can offer all the recipes for an inspired and enchanted life that we will ever need.
Dr Sharon Blackie is a psychologist, psychotherapist and author who teaches mythology and creative writing. Her latest book The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday (September Publishing) explores how we can cultivate enchantment and magic in the modern world.