You, like many others, may have come to this article because
you want more from life. In this sense, you and I may be alike
because we’re searching for greater happiness and a stronger
sense of fulfillment.
If you are someone in your thirties or older, and perhaps
western, then you, like me, may have read enough adventure
stories or seen enough Walt Disney to have been heartened by
the stories of ugly guys, like the beast in Beauty and the
Beast, winning the beauty, Belle. I don’t know about you, but
that story gave me hope!
And maybe you relate to the heroics of Robin Hood who stood no
nonsense, not even from the baddies in charge while King Richard
crusaded. And Robin, in between robbing the rich and dishing it
out to the poor, still had time to get his work-life balance
right. In between robbing the rich and dishing it out to the
poor he still had the time to party with his mates and date the
fairest maiden in the land. The old rogue!
Maybe you loved the never-grow-old attitude of Pan, willed
Hercules to conquer all and craved the day that you could leave
school and set off through the forest of life, whistling and
singing as merrily as one of the Seven Dwarfs, as you headed
your way to a job that made your heart sing with joy!
And maybe, like me, now you’ve grown up, you realise that the
world is not quite the way you imagined it in your youth:
Cinderella has not pulled up outside your home in her pumpkin
carriage, nor is Snow White cooking dinner for you when you
get home from the office after a day working for a guy who
would find himself in steaming hot water if he had a nose like
Pinocchio.
Well I don’t know about you, but I felt a little disgruntled and
let down with the way life turned out after such a romantic,
adventurous childhood heavily laden with dreams.
Disgruntled by the time I hit my mid-twenties? More like
disconnected: divorce, obesity, financial troubles and abuse
had all gone on in my life by then and I suppose in a way I did
feel like a couple of the dwarfs – grumpy and sleepy! Maybe your
experience is similar, maybe a little different, slightly better
or worse, but I’m sure we can empathise with each other and
maybe even share a little feeling of disillusionment with life
in general.
But this word “disillusionment”… it makes me wonder… It makes
me wonder how I came to be disillusioned. Because to come to a
place of “disillusionment” must mean I had an “illusion” in the
first place. And I guess that this illusion might have been
shaped by the wonders of Disney and the hopes of romance and
magic in a future and the values set by the society of the time:
work hard for a living and marry for life – in other words grow
up, be a hero and marry a princess.
But what are your illusions, my new friend? What did you hope
to have found in life before you stumbled on my article? Who
did you hope to be? Who did you hope to love? And where did it
all go wrong?
But I have some other questions for you before you go: what if
all that experience has come to you for your greater good? What
if you could understand it? What if you could use it? What if
you could rise above it? What if you could now become that hero
you always dreamed you would be and reconnect with that world
of romance, adventure and wonder?
What if everything in your life had a purpose? What if you have
a life purpose? What if that life purpose were to set out with an
illusion, find the opposite of that illusion – disillusionment –
and then rediscover the original illusion so you could ultimately
experience the true magic and wonder of life and live happily
ever after?
Perhaps all the difficulty is worthwhile. Perhaps all our
troubles have true meaning, my friend and perhaps we are now
ready to experience the magic this world has to offer. I guess
we must also remember that even Walt Disney himself had his
challenges: I understand he slept rough in his office because he
couldn’t afford accommodation and even had no shoes left to wear
when he finally got invited to a meeting that changed his life,
and all of ours.
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