Fairytales and False Hope

Once upon a time, there was a princess, born into royalty. She had absolutely no skill or common sense. When fairies were invited to her christening to magically give her the beauty, wit, and talent that she obviously lacked, an uninvited fairy cursed her with a prophecy that she would die after pricking her finger on a spindle. A good fairy happened to be by her side, and changed the curse so that she would be woken after meeting the most perfect person in her life.

And so, after a few years of her father's desperate attempts to shield her from fatally pricking her finger and snuffing it, she was intelligent enough to ask a mysterious woman in her home if she could try spinning. The finger got cut, the blood came out, and down she dropped. The good fairy then returned again and shut everyone down, probably so that nobody could ever feel pain again (how realistic). She also placed a barrier around the castle.

The prince that she had always dreamed of dared to investigate and woke her and everyone else with a kiss. They lived happily ever after.

At first, I just rolled my eyes at fairy tales like these. I heard them, and went, "whatever". But now, I only have one thing to say:

Damn you.

I never thought I believed in happy endings. I always assumed that if some crisis ever came up in my life, I'd deal with it myself. Looks like I was wrong. I did exactly what Miss Beauty did. I pricked my own finger. I almost killed myself. I waited. And waited. And what happened? Nothing. Nothing except that I was now being consumed by my problems. But the prince will arrive soon, right? I can hear him outside my castle right now! Hmmm... Looks like he stopped for coffee at Starbucks first. But he'll get here eventually, and everything will be alright.

This is the moral that I get from fairy tales and happy endings. They're polluting my mind. They can teach a lesson of patience, sure, but patience without intuition and initiative are absolutely LETHAL. If everyone in the world just went to sleep whenever they had a problem, what do you think would happen? Yes, the sun would still rise and set at regular intervals, but what will we become?

Notice how in Sleeping Beauty, our beloved protagonist does nothing whatsoever. Her good looks are drawn from extensive magic surgery, and she attracts her soulmate via her "exterior". They all just happened to be in the right place at the right time. She's too stupid to know that she shouldn't touch the spindle herself and ends up half dead. She gets her ass saved and lives feeling wonderful. Now all the little boys and girls are going around filled with a serial killing imposter: HOPE.

Hope is the most addictive substance in the Universe, with love and pride following close behind. The mortality rate from complete hope withdrawal is 100%. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to enjoy regular doses, but the moment you're addicted, you're in for it. So, these children are going around expecting that everything will be laid out like a highway to paradise, but one day while going across that road, they'll get careless and crash into the wall, or something. It's painful. Very. And some don't even recover from their first accident. They stay there, driving at a snail's pace, mortified of what will happen if they speed up again. Unfortunately, some of them give up, and never make it there. We usually call this suicide.

But then again, the whole point of driving onward is that there is a chance of a return on our investment. There might be something better, and we hope that there is. Therefore, it is up to the individual to decide whether or not it is worth it to keep hoping. After all, that feeling is bliss, but in this world, it is a charlatan nevertheless.