Long tall towers, a speaking bear that loves honey, a girl who becomes so tiny, pigs that build houses, a girl who wears a red hood in the woods, a princess who has unimaginably long tresses, aren’t these characters a part of our lives? Since the day you could understand words and sentences you must have been immersed in a world so full of these beautiful miracles and all you wanted to do back then was to retain them, but aren’t we doing that already?
I can still narrate every story and their morals today. These were taught years ago but don’t I, you and many others out there still remember them? Do we not at least once want to go back to these times, just for the sake of it, to live in a world that is so innocent, a world that will enclose you in its miraculous embrace? Each and every one of these children’s stories hold memories that can’t be erased. We learnt them when we grew up, a stage that is so important to us today and later in life.
Stories like these will not be told to us as adults but think about it, it won’t be the same even if someone tried to read it now as an adult. Just imagine sitting in your grandmother’s or your mum’s or dad’s lap, their hands gently stroking your head and these stories just flowing out from their heart and you being pulled into the story, constantly trying to visualize those words. When you go to bed you force them to tell it to you again and when you fall asleep you are transported to worlds beyond your reach. Your dreams are brimming with kings and queens, forts and palaces, animals and birds that could sing and a hero who will always be there to save you.
These stories launch you into a space where you are so many characters. You can be anyone you want to be. You can be Alice, Winnie, Hansel, the mouse, the frog prince, the ugly duckling or prince charming. You choose who you want to be. And this space lets you discover the world all by yourself. Most of these stories are fables and while you are smothered with these morals towards the end of each story, you carry them around in your adult years. Unconsciously these morals imprint themselves in you and become a part of you.
Stories that are meant for children not only build them a safer place to grow but plants in them the seeds of what they’ll need to orchestrate their lives all by themselves. In a world that intervenes so much into our lives, it becomes difficult to be unaffected by it. As much as these stories encouraged us to socialise it also talked about how important it is to love ourselves. As children all we had towards ourselves was love. We were kind to us and those around us and as we grow out of our shells somewhere along the journey we lose it. Every stage of life pushes back what we learnt and experienced as a child and today some of us just stand here with so little left from what we had.
Transitioning into adulthood can be difficult for some, traumatising for some and just a smooth sail for others but childhood and these stories is a life of miracles that we still yearn to live. I wish I could go back to the times where every night the same story was told over and over again and I would never get bored. I would still laugh at all the funny dialogues. I wish we could all be there one day, in that world that was magically, mysteriously wholesome. In a world of stories and magic how could human souls not be spellbound?
