In Fairyland

We've had a good summer season of movies. I managed to get round to seeing How to Train Your Dragon 3 along with the new Mary Poppins, and I - with my simple, unrefined and uncultured taste in movies - must say they were rather impressive.

But, that being said, I've always had a soft spot for good kids movies. Perhaps most of us do. They're a true treat for the heart. So many people I know have told me their favourite movie is a kids movie
(usually Shrek), and I am no exception. There aren't many movies that are as memorable and snuggle as close to the heart as kids movies can.
It's a beautiful little paradox.

You know, Einstein (a man with a magnificent brain and even better hair) once told parents that, if they wanted intelligent children, they ought to ...
"Read them fairy tales!"
And, after that...?
"Even more fairy tales!!!!"

Well I reckon he's on to something.

Someone has said somewhere that fairy tales are best, simply because they do not fear to tell the truth:
They offer no apology even as they tell us such preposterous nonsense such as that shepherd boys often make the best kings, and children are far better at beating monsters than the proudest knights.
They dare to remind us that fortune is fragile, and always has a cost of some sort, always hinging precariously on a compromise. Advising that promises are best taken seriously and breaking one might just steal away a kingdom, a lover, or a blessing, or a dear baby child.
They say love hurts and demands sacrifice.
They dare to reveal the true ugliness of those poor souls in love with their own reflection,
and point out that those who hoard over money and wealth may readily be called dragons.
They demand that magic is an everyday occurrence, not unlike the evening news or the rising sun.
They expect that treasure awaits those who face trial, with virtue and humility. Not the strong, necessarily, but the selfless and the brave.

And, above all, they dare to say all this as though, just maybe, it were actually true.

Perhaps, that is why children love them, for children love justice and truth, and demand 'what's fair'.
But we old people fear them. Sometimes they just cut too deep.

Yet Tolkien reminds us that fairy tales were written for adults - that Little Red Riding Hood was eaten by the wolf over and over before one day the woodcutter finally hopped in and saved her - yet they were "relegated to the nursery", where we could laugh them away and forget.  Grimm's tales it seems are not to grim for children, while they might just shake their parents down to the soul.

But if we let them, they can work magic.
They can remind us who we are. We can be children again.

And now is when you dismiss me for a nonsensical whimsical old romantic who's let his brain flop out onto his lap while he was too busy admiring the sunlight shimmering through the morning dew drops that kiss the wild roses, or something like that. But that is wherein the mistake lies...

...for children are not romantics, but the most grounded realists of us all.


G.K. Chesterton (in perhaps the most entertaining work of non-fiction I've ever had the pleasure of reading) tells of how fairy tales "touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment ... These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water."

It is with this fresh wonder that children seem to welcome every day.

It is we rather, now grown old and sentimental, who are obsessed with the unreal fantasy that life is devoid of any excitement, magic, eternal legacy, rhyme and reason, while the children rush to greet the world with all wide eyes and smiles, ready to lap up the blues, the greens, the ambers, the greys, so deliberate and perfect and magnificent as a painting. To behold the sheer magnificence of the soft blue sky (as expansive as a giant's cloak), the boom of thunder with lightning's flashes (screams of wars raged in the firmament), to sing nonsense to the birds (and listen for the reply), and to dance in the rain (for the lonely night sky). Up to the clouds with the epics they tell (not necessarily about sheep), and down to the finest detail scribbled into flower petals and seashells (by some peerless artists' hand). They are slain again and again by the sheer beauty and awesomeness of the cosmos.

And why shouldn't they?
What is not magical and amazing about this miraculous world that we have somehow - trapped in some depressing and claustrophobic fantasy - grown bored of. We wake each morning to the same earth, same sky, same people, and the grass the same green ... and how magnificent is that, that grass should be such a deliberate, triumphant, and confident green (when it could well have been purple), marching ever so slowly to take over the whole world. And it grows and it dies and it grows again. Ha! Magnificent! It never grows old. It's just like magic!
The child beholds the same wonder every day and, while we grunt and groan at the weather, they leap in laughing 'why? why? why? why?'

And they are not foolish old romantics, but are utterly grounded in reality; seeing clearly that life is a quest, with dragons to be slain, treasure to be won, and beauty to be defended. Every action echoes through eternity. Children are eager for the adventure they hear singing through the spheres. A song we've all heard. They hear the call to be heroes.

And our world suffers a crisis of heroes at the moment, doesn't it?

The heroes we hear about nowadays are such marvels (hehe), big characters with great powers. But the heroes of fairy tales are really quite simple and small, their heroics not coming from any magnificent powers and blessings, but rather their strength came from virtue, bravery, selfless service, and (dare I say) humility. Perhaps the closest example we applaud today is Captain Steve Rogers, who was brave and selfless well before they went and made him super. But the heroes of fairyland are still small heroes, sometimes doing only the littlest things, everyday things, heroic things. They are, in my highly fallible opinion, the better lot. I see in my mind poor little Jack, cutting down the beanstalk to splat the tyrannical Hulk clambering down from above.
I trust you know how the rest goes.

We have forgotten what it is to be a hero, have grown old and forgotten the dreams of our youth; where great courage and love are rewarded beyond imagining, and the forgotten little orphan is really undiscovered royalty. We have been lulled into complacency by a world that prefers comfort over virtue. Comfort, of course, turns out to be more profitable.
So, I implore you, take up the banner and charge (you needn't carry a sword, very few heroes do).
To live without a higher purpose, without striving for the transcendent, a heritage to defend or a beauty to win. Is that even life?

And read some fairytales sometime (perhaps we could get a poll going of our favourites in the comments or something, eh?), or your favourite childhood book, or perhaps a movie.
You might just find you remember some things.