Every one of us have grown up hearing or watching fairy tales in one form or another. Whether they be Disney movies or the traditional stories by the Brothers Grimm, Snow White, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast are all common characters when we are children. When I was young, watching these movies with my sisters, I resisted the magic of these stories because I insisted that they are for girls. And as I have grown up, these stories seem to have fallen out of my focus, becoming objects of my past. In truth, however, these stories have been told generation after generation because of their power, but also because again and again adults feel drawn to these stories as worthy of their children. No Disney filmmaker can resist a good fairy tale. There is magic within them, magic that even adults cannot resist. Here, I wish to expound upon why these stories are important and how we can embrace them as part of our culture and learn from the many lessons they teach.
Tradition is the truest form of democracy because it allows the votes of all the living as well as the dead. Therefore, tradition is to be trusted as a source of wisdom and good action. But where does tradition play out in our world today? Obviously, the Church. But in a broader sense, it plays out in myth, the stories we tell one another. Fairy tales are a perfect example of this. The tradition of telling fairy stories goes back a long way, and is a great source of lessons for children, but can also be good sources of common sense for adults. Cinderella preaches humility; Beauty and the beast teaches to love before one is lovable. These common sense lessons exemplify how we are to live our lives. The traditions of myth should not be abandoned, but embraced as a manifestation of democracy in our world.
Often these tales contain restraints on action or freedom. To the modern, this is abominable; nothing is so evil as an attack on freedom. But it is simply this restraint that grants the greatest freedom of all: Joy. If we are "free" to do whatever we wish, we will never be surprised, because our actions will be entirely predictable. But with restraint on freedom, there comes choice; to abide by that limit, or deal with the consequences.
This is the lesson we learn from fairy tales. Happiness always comes with limits. The Fairy Godmother sent Cinderella to the ball; but with the very important warning to be back by midnight lest the magic wear off. In these kind of situations, we can hardly expect no limits because we do not understand the whole of the context. G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible as the towering trees.” Simply put, life itself is a gift, and we should not look a gift horse in the mouth. We are human, and we have natural limits on what we can know and understand, and because of this we should not complain about those limits. They may be there for our own good. When we resent the limitations put upon the Gift, we are in effect resenting the Giver. This is the lesson that fairy tales teach us through their simple stories; life is full of mystery, and we shouldn't complain about that.
