The short list: Just another average Tuesday – Work, gym, home.

On to today’s diatribe: Fairy Tales and Their Real World Analogues

fairy tale noun.

  1. A fanciful tale of legendary deeds and creatures, usually intended for children.
  2. A fictitious, highly fanciful story or explanation.

Dr. Karl Oppel stated, in The Parent’s Book: Practical Guidance for the Education at Home: The fairy tales, that is fantastic tales of miraculous, supernatural things and events, aim at arresting the imagination by stimulating the imagination in a very vivid way; sorcerers and fairies, spirits and ghosts, fabulous animals and inanimate things endowed with miraculous powers appear as actors in them, bound by no rule or prescription, which makes them really very fit to capture the attention of listeners and readers.

I encountered a situation that reminds me of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. In the story, a child points out the fact, obvious to all save the Emperor, that he isn’t wearing any clothes. After this revelation, everyone at the gathering started to acknowledge this fact.

Oppel: “…fairy tales feed the love for the miraculous and further the belief in the supernatural. One is often surprised to see how some people accept the most unreasonable, let them tell the most nonsensical and even believe it, yes how even civilized people demonstrate a credulity, that would be totally incomprehensible, if one did not know, how the susceptible children’s mind had been prepared for this by all kinds of miracle tales.”

Alexander Pope is quoted for saying” “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Whose responsibility is it to tell the Emperor: “I can see your bum?” The royal advisors? Courtiers? A child in the gathered masses? Others knew that “something” was amiss. No one spoke of what it was. It wasn’t always something tangible; it could be as elusive as trying to catch smoke with a net. But I caught it, or at least a part of it, and I gave it a voice – a quiet voice, but a voice nonetheless. And the fine clothing began to unravel.

Do I consider it a “good” or “bad” thing? I don’t think that either label applies, in this case; I would simply say that it “was.” Would I do it again? Yes, although possibly in a different manner – an earlier “fitting,” if you will. Something did come out of the tangled skein: It opened, or maybe simply reopened, some avenues of dialogue. That makes it worthwhile.

Peace.