Recently I saw the new Beauty and the Beast movie. After some reflection, it became clear to me that the beast (Prince Adam) is a representation of all of us, and of the value of suffering in our lives. We all struggle with the beast in us, the arrogant and selfish tendencies all of us sometimes yield to. The movie holds an important key to our ability to overcome our own beast.
In the beginning, Prince Adam is actually much like the other of Belle's suitors, Gaston. He is full of vanity and pride. He surrounds himself with beautiful women and with an accumulation of objects to glorify himself. Both are put in situations that could humble them. Prince Adam is cursed to be a beast in a lonely castle with all his servants turned into furniture and such, with one girl as his only hope for joy in life. Gaston is rejected by the one girl he really wants and her family. It appears though that Prince Adams struggles are far deeper and longer lasting. This more intense suffering is ultimately the only thing that can put Prince Adam in a position to be transformed into a character capable of gentleness, kindness, and true love.
For Gaston, the humiliation and rejection only served as an obstacle to his external goal of attaining Belle as his wife. However, Prince Adam was desperate enough to allow his isolation and suffering to change him, knowing the only real path to freedom was to learn to love, for that would break the spell. The rose is a powerful external representation of the truth. Without genuine love for others, he would never be free. Unkind people are not happy. We naturally recognize that those who do harm to others are projecting their pain on the world. It is the power of love for another that soothes our pain and heals our souls. It is that capacity that truly sets us free of the curse of pride and it's primary feature: malice.
We may wonder why we suffer. We may blame God and wonder why He allowed such things to happen to us. The truth is that God puts us purposefully in circumstances opposite of our natural temperament, because otherwise we would never be able to make the changes we need to make. He is giving us the opportunity to choose. We will suffer until we realize that the only true cure is love, until love becomes the essence and the fullness of our natures, until we have no disposition towards cruelty, until every moment is dedicated to the well being of others, and to the whole human race. We must become so absorbed in love that all we do stems from it. Then even if we suffer in our body, in our environment, we will be happy, we will be at peace, nothing will truly make us suffer. Nothing will truly make us miserable. We may experience sorrows, but the sorrows will be swallowed up in the joy of love. Each day is an opportunity to get one step closer to this goal.
