Category: fairy tale

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“They All Do it…” – What’s Human? – Values and Yardsticks – Happiness…?

Men sitting on floor and meditating in lotus pose meditation practice concept cartoon
Image free license via freepik.com

In this day and age quite a number of people go by marketing ideas: “The most wonderful holiday; adventure; more money equals more happiness; me first.” Many also for most of their lives are more or less unhappy or feel a strange urge or yearning for ‘the real thing’.

There are numerous methods and substances around people revert to as well in order to gain a feeling of fulfillment. Of self-respect/self-esteem. While inside a sometimes half-conscious nagging little voice either asks constantly about their shortcomings. Or about the missing something in their lives that would finally get them to that happy ‘ending’.

They tend to forget that what others talk about in so many words, often boasting (even if in a gentle manner not quite discernible right at first), is not really true. Even if actions actually happened – which also can be doubtful with those ‘building their image’ all day long – their effects usually do not come up to the story told.
Sailors were said to be the ones having invented the art of ‘telling tall tales’. Which puts it in a nutshell, that principle…

In due course also, values and yardsticks for the individual behaviour are not reflected that much anymore: “They all do it… Why not me too?”

Additionally the ideas of patriarchy and its pitfalls as well as changing views on womanhood make it challenging to know your way: Some actually state it just as the old saying goes: “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander…”  Equality in terms of “if men can do it, women can too.”

These things are crucial about all of this:

    • Something does not become right, just because many people do it, too. Or because no one will realize it…
    • Happiness is not in applause of the many, the crowd. The audience. – Happiness is inside.
    • More money may make you feel safer. But only if you will let it. It won’t make you happier. Especially not if self-esteem is missing. ‘Missing in action’…

Eastern systems of living and health start teaching us (again) what it is that makes humans happier:

Self-awareness that will be the beginning of a new self-esteem. With it comes the realization that looking out for yourself in a healthy manner will also enable you to find new ways of reaching out; connecting. With people of like mind. With real conversations. With the ability to understand that happiness sometimes is to accept our unwanted emotions such as sorrow or worry as part of the whole:

Being part of a community. With many people around who wish us and the whole well  – too.

Happiness is in the small things.

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The Long View – Hollywood and Bollywood – The ‘Happy End’ of Fairy Tales

Fairy christmas holiday lights in a jar with christmas decoration and snow in half darkness
Love is perhaps the single most often treated subject anywhere: In arts, crafts and music, writing and the film industry, including this blog. There’s such a lot around on love, passionate and otherwise. Poems, novels, songs, concerts, ballets, stage plays, and, last but not at all least, TV and cinema movies as well as serials. They can entertain, instruct or move you, separately – or all at once. But one thing is true too:
Many of them are quite beside the facts.

I think we can safely conclude one thing: What we do not see or have is reality. And what we do see or have is reality, as well.

The longer you are around, the more you learn to understand that life is not a cookie jar. No song and dance either. That passionate love affairs that end happily for all concerned are not around every corner, no matter how frustrated you might have felt in your everyday life before…

Happiness in life comes from the small things, the ‘mundane’, the apparently undramatic.

Why is that? Because, human beings are not ‘made from clay’ (‘flesh and blood’) alone. Simply and concisely put:

We are no cars… to be assembled and put together in the workshop – or put right by replacing a part like a broken windshield wiper.

A human being is more than the sum of its parts.

That means that apart from any helping elements such as opportunity or surroundings or music or – stimulants…there’s always the emotional part, and ‘the day after’. And the others, those concerned.

I have been interested in humans and why they behave the way they do, love, hatred, fury, anger, frustration, joy, happiness and love or friendship, and all the existing research on that, in more or less depth, as well as all the arts have to say and show for it, all my life. I am no youngster anymore and I can say this, with all my heart.

Remember that you are no “gymnast of love” – but a human being, with heart, mind, soul, and body.

Again:

A human being is more than the sum of its parts.

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Dreams and Pictures that Move – Moving Pictures

image of movie theatre and lights on its dark screen
The prince and princess, the lovers, the heroes, the white stallion, the knight and the lady in distress, they are images, similar in many countries’ folk stories and fairy tales.

“Moving” – it’s a word that in the English language has several rather distinct meanings. One of them is about emotion, basic human feelings. They move us. Deeply, in some cases. Sometimes it’s words, connected to ideas.

Or the simple or more complex images that recall a happy moment, peaceful nights full of light – or sad moments.

Movies, the moving images originally, have become a forceful way of telling stories, just as plays, their ‘predecessors’. To tell stories is a pastime that is as old as mankind itself. Among the most famous artists always were storytellers, the craftsmen and craftswomen of words, phrases and sentences invoking images in the mind of the audience – and thus emotions.

And just as fairy tales they sometimes barely represent the real world, the truth. Instead, they tell us about the wonderful combinations of dreams and wishes people have – and create new stories from to entertain – and for a few hours take us to fairyland.

It is a fine way to spend the time, at times. This world some people force us to see can be cruel and dangerous. I consider  myself lucky in spite of quite some hardships I’ve seen and experienced in the course of my life.

I have read through towers of books, a mid-sized library at least. Countless movies and TV-serials that did help me laugh at the world and the hardships, sometimes. And that also managed to be a sort of friend, patient, non-judicial in some cases, boosting self-confidence and understand about hardship in other parts of the world.

Indeed, documentaries, too, these days have reached a high level of expertise, combining entertainment with facts.

I closely studied the literature and culture of three distinct countries covering a time span of two thousand years. I’ve read about many more. And heard about still more.

I can safely say that I know a thing or two about history and mankind.

I want to encourage all who read this: If you haven’t already, check your values – and then read books, or articles, or posts, or – watch movies, but always remember: To confuse writing or other pictorial arts with reality can be a problem, at least.

There is a person or persons behind it – and sometimes it’s only a thin veil between yourself and reality, yet – not reality itself.

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