I just watched a movie that I’d not seen in a long while. It’s been a while not because I don’t like the movie, but because like the title character “I want the fairy tale.” I want it, even though I know that it’ll never happen. And that leaves me with an emptiness deep down inside.
Love that happens in movies like the one I just watched, “Pretty Woman”, as well as “Runaway Bride”, “Notting Hill”, and a whole slew of other similar movies, doesn’t really happen outside of a movie set.
Yet, we’re still drawn to wanting that unachievable fairy tale.
Why?
Is it because we are hoping hope upon hope that someday somewhere we’ll meet that someone who’ll wipe away all the sadness, all the loneliness, and fill all the emptiness that we have inside? Maybe. Maybe it’s quite the opposite, and that we know it’s fantasy that makes it so much more attractive to us. Knowing that it’ll never happen allows us to momentarily escape from our reality into that world we see on the screen.
I don’t know.
All I know is that as long as I’m wanting that fairy tale, I’ll never find it. Because even if I do, I’ll still be so unsure that it really is that illusive “fairy tale” that I’ll pass it by.
And that scares the sh** out of me.
Because it’s quite possible that I’ve already done that and passed by that one opportunity to have a true “fairy tale”.
The thing that tears me up inside, is that I’ll never know.
Strange Ways by Ace of Base
funny thing about fairy tales, is that all of them have roots in reality. So what that means is that before it was written, it had to happen at some point. The fact is that as unlikely as it seems, the fairy tale DOES actually happen; quite frequently in fact. It’s not an escape to “want the fairy tale”, it’s a normal and reasonable expectation for our own lives.
I posted this a few days ago somewhere else, but I’ll post it here to help along my point:
“Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.” – James Dean
I remember thinking and even writing down things very similar to what you just did. The biggest obstacle I had was not how much money I had, or how I looked or any of that crap. No, my biggest obstacle was me. I always played it too safe, never asking out the girl, always believing the answer would automatically be no.
Once I stopped playing it safe and started living a little more “out on the edge” that’s when things started to get better. I got my fair share of rejections because of it, believe me. It’s also why I found what I was looking for and have been married to her for 6 years now.
It’s not easy, I know, and it sucks, but there it is.