Exploring where life and story meet!

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Save your life, read a fairy tale

Back in the foggy past, before History began, when man was still muddling through the labyrinthine corridors of Legend, back before the Internet, in the dimmest reaches of Time, when boggles and fairies and ghouls still lurked in the deeps of the woods and haunted the wild places just beyond the hedgerow, we were a far wiser race.  We didn't believe in myths like the infallibility of technology, the boundless wisdom and generosity of the government, or the immortality of our current, physical body, rather our forebears knew all three had their limits and had a healthy skepticism of the utopian promises of each.  But we Western moderns complacently and happily forget that we are actually rather helpless specks cowering on the surface of a galactic rock hurtling through space at an extraordinary speed, that tyrants, war, disaster, disease, and death are not just things found in stories, but hideous specters with whom we must share our existence, and inevitably, will overshadow our own short, tragic stories.

Yes, we have extended lifespans, decreased disease and hunger and poverty for a vast swath of humanity, undermined many a dictatorship, increased the standard of living, saved the whales...but with our success has come pride, and intentional ignorance and complaisance.  Man in the days of legend knew he was fallible, fragile, and finite; he lived like he knew one day soon he would die.  We think there is a surgery, an app, a gadget, an excuse, a pill, a diet, a guru, a government program to fix our problems, whatever they be, and that death, if it comes, is a thing little to be thought of or dreaded, an occurrence on par with being kidnapped by a dragon, unlikely to happen and of no major consideration.

A blizzard just shut down the state for three days, for all our vaunted technology, we were at its mercy as we huddled helplessly indoors from the wrath without.  A dear friend's father was just diagnosed with a fatal and debilitating disease.  A recent truck accident killed a young father of four.  We are still vulnerable, finite, fragile, and fallible creatures, we've just managed to push out the bounds of 'civilization and safety,' the pixies and dragons still lurk in the wilds without, they are just farther away, just enough to make us think ourselves triumphant and safe and immortal.  The 'archaic' man knew himself to be at the mercy of time, fate, and chance, that death hulked like a specter over life, and the wise were prepared when finally it pounced like inexorable night.  But we moderns dither, make excuses, ignore it, pretend it isn't there, think some miraculous cure will spring suddenly from the mind of man and spare us the trouble, but it won't.

What can overcome the darkness, chase back the night, fix the broken, right the wrongs, save us from oblivion?  Perhaps the answer is found in the fairy tales held sacred by the benighted residents of bygone days.  Perhaps believing in what modern men call myths is actually the first step upon the road of Wisdom:

"O come, Thou Wisdom, from on high,
and order all things far and nigh;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.

Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel,
shall come to thee O Israel!"

~O Come, O Come, Emmanuel~

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