Sometimes grown-ups are stupid. Blunt that may be, a bit harsh perhaps, but I do not think it is completely untrue. I have been blessed with fantastic examples of adult maturity and grace, examples which I intend to follow. The fact remains, however, that adults are uniquely prone to some errors that children avoid with ease.
Kids remind us that life is a grand, arduous and joyful escapade — anything but boring. They remind us of the thrill of a spontaneous adventure. They remind us of the seemingly inconsolable tragedy that is a rainy day, and they remind us where to drum up the pluck to go out in the rain and jump in puddles. Much of it comes down to this — adults are in mortal danger, the danger of becoming disenchanted.
It is saddening to reflect on how radical it has become to affirm the truth that life is, at its core, a fairy-story. More properly, we live constantly on the borders of the land of faerie, a word borrowed from the philosophy and literary musings of J.R.R. Tolkien. This perilous realm is replete with wonders and mystery. In it, we come alive. We acknowledge it in our myths, fairy tales and the like. They are representations of the “stuff of faerie” with which we cross paths from time to time. The great travesty of the modern world, the spirit of “rationalism” or whatever it is that haunts us, is that many people, perhaps most, will no longer even recognize the existence of that strange country. “I cannot see it,” says one. It is sadly ironic because he is pointing out his own blindness.
We are living in the midst of faerie. It is not some otherworld that can be pointed out on a map. The heroes and villains in our midst, the acts of tender mercy or of desperate treason, all flow out of the spirit of faerie. Too many of us, when we grow up, are conditioned into mindless, soulless, disenchanted lumps who believe that the drudgery and dreariness they willingly submit to is all that could be. They think they are "humans" — pieces of matter, animals, rational machines. But they are wrong. They are “humans” — poets, pilgrims, either saints or devils.
Tolkien knew that faerie undergirds the world that we inhabit. Not everyone does, however. Tolkien’s good friend C.S. Lewis was a modern prophet, calling attention to the rich narrative that we are living in right now, as well as the emptiness of a life that turns a blind eye to it. In "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," the pathetically sensible Eustace is confronted by Ramandu who claims to be a star. Eustace says (and one can barely withstand the onslaught of self-righteousness), “In our world, a star is a ball of flaming gas.” Ramandu patiently replies, “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”
Such patience is required when dealing with a world and a culture that no longer believes in fairy-stories. The great G.K. Chesterton defended the telling of fairy tales to children by saying, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” Adults often need to be reminded that the dragons exist in the first place, however. Children have the upper hand there. Only when the dragons have been beaten in the land of faerie is there any chance of dealing with the annoying coworker or tackling the monstrous pile of bills. If I am to tell you a secret, I suspect that such things are really dragons or goblins in disguise.
