Your Life as a Fairy Tale

As a culture, I fear we are forgetting the importance of imagination. Our media-flooded world gives us the ability to be passive receptors of information, stimulus, and virtual worlds, but we are rarely asked to use the creative force of our own imaginations. To stop doing and just dream, to sit quietly and imagine a better life or a precious memory or the spiritually pleasurable beauty of other worlds -- to "space out," in other words, or to "escape" to a "fantasy world" -- has come to be seen as shameful.

And yet we are spiritually destitute without imagination. Without imagination, our souls starve. Without imagination, we have no empathy, no ability to put ourselves in anyone else's shoes -- which is so dangerous to our communities and our world. And without imagination, we have no ability to create our own futures.

As a teacher, I see this dearth so clearly in kids who hate to read and beg for movies and internet imagery. "I'm a visual learner," they insist. Well, what about the visions in your head? Reading is visual. Reading stories requires us to imagine a world, instead of having it imagined for us. And there's power in that, a power we've almost forgotten we have.

Long ago, stories were told and heard and imagined; long ago, imagination could support an entire people -- through the vehicle of a myth that made this life larger than life and gave it meaning. Unconsciously we still love myths, and we miss them. You can tell that we miss them by the way people go crazy over epic, magical fairy tales of good and evil like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. You can tell by the way we follow the lives of the only mythical people in our world -- movie stars and pop stars -- looking for inspiration from people who seem greater than human. Myths are stories about the meaning of life, involving idyllic heroes that live in the collective consciousness of an entire people and teach them how to live.

There may be myths that guide you personally, such as religious stories or stories that were told in your family. But by using the power of your imagination, you can also see your own life as a myth; by translating it into the poetic and grandiose symbols of a mythical story, you can find new meaning in your life and even see where to go next.

Try this. Imagine you are the hero or heroine of a great myth, which is your life. What kind of hero or heroine would you be? A prince or princess, a knight, a magician, a lonely orphan with a secret power, a wise woman, a magical creature? Spend some time on this, and enjoy it (daydreaming is fun!). Then imagine the setting of your story. If your life were a fairy tale, where would you be right now? Does it feel like a lost world under the sea, a dungeon, an enchanted forest? And most importantly, what is your quest? What is the central question of your life, the dream you're fighting for? What is the biggest obstacle to achieving it? Don't be afraid to be dramatic. Your boss might be a dragon; your fears might be a prison.

Now that you have imagined the basic pretexts of your personal myth, you can smile with anticipation at your own life, because in myths, the hero always succeeds in the end! You just don't know exactly how you will get there, and that's the fun part: to watch the story unfold. But you can also use your imagination to influence what happens, because after all, it's your life, and you're the teller of the story as well as the main character! So who are your allies? What magical power do you have that will help you? What needs to happen next?

Even if you're not into this fairy tale stuff, even if your life seems not in the least bit magical and you're not interested in thinking of it that way, what I'm really asking you to do is this. Pretend your life is an interesting story that you're reading or watching. And this particular episode is going to have a happy ending (believe it!). So what do you think needs to happen next? What do you, the main character, need to face or overcome, and what will help you to do it?

The truth is, you know the answer to these questions in your heart. Just step back, believe in the power of the story, and imagine your own life. Your life wants to unfurl its unique story. It wants to make sense, and it wants to be beautiful.