FAIRY TALES

 

We are surrounded by fairy tales. There are hundreds of books and cartoons about these fairy tales and we spend a great deal of time reading and watching them since childhood. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and the many other fairy tales are and have always been an important part of our lives. These stories have been imprinted in our minds and they have captured our souls so much so that some of us live in a fantasy world miles away from reality. 

We are sooo fascinated by these imaginary tales that we actually believe they are true. This is most specifically true when it comes to relationships. We start dreaming about our Prince Charming as early as we are 5 or 6, some even earlier. We tend to blindly believe in ‘Love at first sight’, ‘Prince Charming’, ‘Happily ever after’ depicted in these unrealistic stories of princes and princesses. May be there is nothing wrong with this. But it becomes a problem when our beliefs and some of the decisions or choices we make in our lives are the results of too many fairy tales we have watched.  

Life sure is not a fairy tale. Therefore, it is not possible to live a realistic life thinking it is one and expecting fairy tale ends to our life stories. I personally don’t believe in ‘love at first sight’ or ‘a prince charming coming in a white horse to my rescue’ or ‘happily ever after’. So far I haven’t fallen in love at first sight and I don’t either believe there is one ‘perfect guy’ for me. There may be many guys out there who have the qualities I look for in a life partner. Coming to ‘happily ever after’, I assume there are many of us who believe that when we get married there’s nothing but happiness and it is the end of our story. Yeah, in fairy tales the story ends there…..

I cannot disagree more on this. Life is not a fairy tale as I have already said so marriage is just the beginning of another chapter in our story, it is not the end.  It would have many twists and turns, challenges and obstacles and there would be many trials we have to go through. The question is how ready are we for these trials both mentally and physically when we begin this new chapter of our lives? The rising number of divorces makes me believe that not many of us are really ready for it. Soon after the big day we begin to realize that our ‘prince charming’ is not so charming and are far from being ‘perfect’. 

To succeed in this journey of our lives we need to focus on the reality and free ourselves from the ideas put into our heads by these so called fairy tales. We need to have realistic expectations and accept the fact that no one is perfect. Each person is unique and we need to learn to live with these differences. Disputes would arise and we can’t avoid them no matter how hard we may try, so our best option would be to solve them as a team and stop playing the blaming game. There would be many occasions where compromising could resolve many issues so learn to compromise often. Sometimes we expect our partners to change for us or in the worst case scenario we try to change them driving them away from us. I have learnt over the years it is not easy to change a person. Think about how hard it is for you to change some of your habits or things about yourself. I have tried to change certain things about myself which I am not so proud of, and if I am honest I must say that I haven’t succeeded much. Imagine how hard it would be to change someone else.

In fairy tales the fairy godmother with a wave of her magic wand solves all problems but this doesn’t happen in real life. We need to fix our problems on our own. Good communication, respect, acceptance, trust, understanding, ability to listen patiently, being non-judgmental and working together as a team are some essential tools which we could use to create ever lasting relationships that would survive even the worst storms.

 Break the spell cast on you by some fiction writers, come down to earth, live a real life with real people, choose a partner who is real and live with realistic expectations.   If you do this I’m sure you have already prevented you and your partner from a lot of unnecessary hassles.

 

"Life isn't a fairy tale, you don't always have happy endings, but you can make the best of what you do have and accept it for what it is, and just keep living, that's all you can do." Me Quotes