“I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.”
– G.K. Chesterton
The older I get, the more I suspect that fairy tales were never merely stories for children.
They were maps.
Maps for navigating a world filled with beauty and terror, loss and redemption, monsters and miracles.
Children seem to know this instinctively.
They approach the world as if it is still enchanted.
A stick becomes a sword. A creek becomes a kingdom. A patch of woods becomes an entire universe. They have not yet learned to divide the world neatly into what is useful and what is meaningless.
Many of us lose that way of seeing.
Some lose it through adulthood.
Others lose it much earlier.
When your childhood contains fear, abuse, chaos, or betrayal, wonder can feel like a luxury you cannot afford. You become practical. Alert. Responsible. You learn survival before you learn delight.
Yet one of the unexpected gifts of raising children has been watching them lead me back to places I thought I had left forever.
I watch them collect rocks as if they are priceless treasures.
I watch them stop in the middle of a walk because they found a beetle.
I listen as they tell stories, build forts, invent worlds, and ask questions no sensible adult would ever think to ask.
And I realize they are teaching me something.
Not how to become a child again.
How to become fully human.
Martin Shaw writes that our culture suffers from a loss of enchantment. We have explanations for everything and intimacy with very little. We know how things work, but often forget how to stand in awe of them.
My children remind me daily.
The world is not less magical because I know more about it.
The forest is still a forest.
The stars are still astonishing.
Stories still matter.
Beauty still has the power to save us from cynicism.
The great mistake of adulthood is believing that enchantment belongs to children.
The opposite is true.
Children begin there. Adults must fight to return.
Not to innocence born of ignorance, but to a deeper innocence that has looked directly at suffering and refused to surrender wonder.
Perhaps that is why the old tales endure.
Because they remind us that the world is far stranger, more dangerous, more beautiful, and more alive than we have been taught to believe.
And somewhere beneath the noise of modern life, the road into the forest is still waiting.
B🤍
Leave a Reply