The fairytales in our heads

Photo by Lance Reis on Unsplash

Fairytales. Many of us were raised listening to the happily-ever-after sort of fairytales. Worlds of magic, where good always wins and where the heroes always gets what they want… and deserve…. and more.

We grow up to learn that, very often, these stories are “just fairytales”. But this piece is about a different sort of fairytale. This is about the fairytales that live in our heads and take shape without us even realising – perhaps sparked by a mix of Disney, social media and social expectations. They infiltrate into our minds where they get implanted and transform into some sort of happiness yardstick we end up measuring our lives against.

Let me give you one simple example.

In my late teens I was let down by pretty much every New Year’s Eve party simply because I had this image in my mind of how the evening should be. Disappointment was inevitable after the evening did not turn out to be lifechanging and I did not meet the love of my life who swept me off my feet.

As we grow up we do adjust our expectations. But those fairytales in our heads still live on as a vision of how we want our life to pan out - or how we think it should. Many women I speak to reveal a glimpse of that fairytale in their head.

“We are living in the real world where there are no filters. The only real filtering we can do comes in the form of the choices to be made and the realities to be accepted.”

Women who chose not to have children to focus on their career are haunted by the fairytale that is motherhood. Unmarried women wonder about the marriage dream. Married women question if their choice of partner really was the ‘one true love’ they once hoped for. Mothers with one child look on at other kids with siblings and question ‘why didn’t I have a second?’.

There are also the career fairytales: ‘By now I should have climbed higher up the career ladder. By now I should know what my passion is. By now I should own a home’.

Social media does not help. It paints a picture of other people’s seemingly perfect and successful lives. It reinforces the belief that some people do get the fairytale.

The expectations may not always be realistic, but the pain and disappointment caused is tangible. So it is that, that we must address. By being honest with ourselves, being kind to ourselves and realising that we are not superhuman and that we are living in the real world where there are no filters. The only real filtering we can do comes in the form of the choices to be made and the realities to be accepted.

Looking back I now see that expecting a ‘happy ending’ from every New Year’s Eve celebration might have been much. Years later this turned out to mean that my story continued. It is my real story: filled with all sorts of experiences that range from the painfully mundane to the extraordinarily special.

This is not “just a fairytale”.