Nobody tells us that life isn’t going to turn out like a fairy tale. As children, we often get the message that we can have or be anything we want. Coupled with movies with happy endings and the shiny (unrealistic) world of social media, that message is being accelerated. We’re promoted a life that is filled with fantasy.
No one explains what living with fantasies looks like; we see false narratives of life through movies, advertising, and social media. We’re presented with a world built on consuming — telling us that the more we have the better we feel. There’s little information sharing around relationships, only this idea of happily ever after. The #relationshipgoals is a pretty picture, not a reality. There’s nothing perfect about any relationship, family, household, workplace or social life.
We’re sold this idea that we can have anything we want, and I think that is absolute BS. We can’t have anything we want. The world is not a fair and equal place; there are social rules, patriarchy, racism, ageism, genderism, economic disparities, lack of access to quality teachers and nutrition, trauma, natural disasters, and on and on and on.
Being told that we can have anything means we follow our fantasies and lose perspective on reality.
I believe in good things, good people, good luck, hard work, inner growth, amazing acts of kindness, philanthropy, and kindness as part of the laws of the universe and how we can improve our world. I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist and optimistic. But I also know that life is unfair, good things happen to bad people, narcissism can win, and poor behaviour can be celebrated, and being at the wrong place/wrong time.
However, when we sell stories and fairy tales about having it all, we fall apart when things don’t go our way. If you’ve never experienced falling apart when things don’t go your way, can you please share your secret with us?!
Life is meant to be beautiful and painful. We’re meant to experience love and pain and have times of struggle and times of ease. If you’ve ever lost a loved one too soon, or a child, partner, sibling, friend, or parent, then you know pain intimately. You’ve been formally introduced to the harsh reality of life.
We allow the false narrations of fantasy to dominate our world. We celebrate pain only after someone has healed from it and can come back with their story of ‘ how they dealt with the pain, but only after they’ve been torn apart and put back together.
As a result, we’re not able to listen to our intuition. We land in relationships that are laced with red flags but ignore them because we’re focussed on the fairy tale instead of the truth. We hang onto an imaginary world as a way to bypass what is happening in front of us. We lose clarity and ignore the problematic behaviours of bosses, friends, and lovers without being honest about what we’re seeing for fear of losing it.
We’ll hold the bad just to taste the fantasy or to look like everyone else or feel better than others. We’ll keep bad company to avoid lonliness.
We’re not all going to have a traditional family, in fact it’s more of a rarity than a reality. But still we dream of it and hold onto relationships because we don’t want others to see us ‘fail.’
I did this with my ex: I was deeply unhappy, we argued a lot. I wasn’t heard, I struggled, I was snappy and frustrated, and yet I couldn’t pull myself out of it. I felt like I had to succeed and I was willing to sacrifice my happiness in order to make sure I could.
Nobody tells us that we should know ourselves first or what it takes to get to know oneself. No one teaches us that if we aren’t connected to our intuition and nervous system, then we will likely make poor choices. We will go into business with people who aren’t willing to show up equally, we’ll have relationships with people who don’t listen to us, we’ll say yes to things out of guilt, we’ll give more than we have, and we’ll justify bad behaviour – all because we don’t know how to listen to ourselves.
We build a life that’s about protecting our dreams and not about living in reality. We protect our ethos and what we’ve strived for and never question WHY we want the thing/relationship/house/career until holding the dream becomes so hard we have to let something go. We micromanage our dreams and keep living in the fantasy instead of being honest with ourselves and others. We stay in the illusion to keep the dream — spoiler alert: that never works.
Life becomes more joy-ess and enjoyable when we learn about ourselves and when we learn what it means to be kind to ourselves, to listen, and to question consumerism. To question what others want for us, and learn what we truly want.
The only way is to ask ‘why’ of everything. We must question why we want, need, crave, and desire.
We’ll find more answers in asking ‘why’ than believing in any fantasy.
Love, Noelle