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About
Obviously each person is different, but I'm sure that secretly all of us long for a "Once upon a time", or a "Long, long ago in a land, far away..." something magical to transport us away from the reality around us.
We all strive for the "Happy ever after" but there is no need to strive for this: Perhaps you can content yourself with knowing that stories are what make the world go round. Without stories, we'd never learn anything and we'd never question anything. Surely, everyone must know that fact is much stranger than fiction. Stories are the life breath of every artist, author and actor. Without them, things would not exist as we know them, stories are all.
Life is the final product from the loom of understanding and it is interpreting the tales that shapes us.
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Life is woven from stories we intrinsically know and to live is to become part of a new one every day. Our imaginations, our fears and hopes shape the lives we lead, and we become one with the stories we heard in our youth.
Each and every one of us as a child wanted to know about the beautiful princess finding her prince, or the handsome prince fulfilling his destiny, but we also craved to know what happened to everyone else; after the Wicked Witch was banished, what became of her? (For that matter, was she really wicked, or a witch?) If Little Red Riding Hood knew about the wolf, why did she go back? (How old exactly was this girl, and was it really a wolf she went to visit?).
We all want to hear the dark side, the unknown side, and this is why these stories are here..
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Fact or fiction? Nobody really knows - a story from a life's experience way, way back which has been told again and again takes on new shapes and forms, fact change perhaps, the truth becomes clouded by the teller's moral views. What started as a truth has become a fiction...
Whatever your views, always take time to look around you - in the midst of the darkest hour there is a light, shining a small glow, but concentrate on it and it'll illuminate everything. Never stop to wonder - science may provide an explanation, but so do stories.
Just because science has proven one lot of fairy photographs false it doesn't mean to say that there aren't some in your garden or local woodland.
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Don't take anything for granted, nor dismiss anything you can't explain fully for a more 'rational' explanation. Nobody has proven that there aren't mermaids or dragons, so there is no reason not to believe that they're there somewhere - we make new discoveries every day, but we don't discover ourselves.
To quote my late Grandmother, "never grow old" - that is to say, whilst I'd strongly encourage an air of scepticism, it's also very healthy to let your heart rule your head once in a while and lose yourself in a really good story.
You learn a lot about yourself, and about other people. And quite possibly gain a new perspective on things. I'm not going to spoil it by telling you what I'm reading at the moment:
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Firstly because I'd like to check with the various authors that they don't mind me mentioning them- and Secondly, I don't want you going off and reading their stuff and not mine!!!
In the interim - go and read all the stories you can find about the world around you - creation myths from different continents and different countries.
Go and read all the fairy tales and folk tales you read as a child.
Now ask yourself - what have I learned from this?
©The Poetic Priestess 2002
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