Illumination | Haiku

Once Upon a Time

Let me tell you a story

“Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch.”

Hans Christian Andersen

Let’s change the ending

Tell a different story

Everyone will win

No one has loved fairy tales more than me. I’ve read the G-rated Golden books. I’ve seen Disney’s sanitized versions. I’ve read the original Grimm Brothers' bloodthirsty versions and the modern take on fairy tales from Tanith Lee to Angela Carter.

All are entertaining storytelling. But there are always winners and losers.

In fact, often it is rich, happy, living winners versus very dead losers or very poor losers or in the worst cases very dead poor losers with their desperate families left on their own.

Maybe that’s a bad belief to instill in children. Good people are rich, happy, and alive. Bad people are poor and sad and end up dead.

I think we need win-win fairy tales.

In game theory, a win–win game is an interaction from which all participants can profit in some way. In conflict resolution, a win–win strategy is a collaborative strategy and conflict resolution process that aims to accommodate all participants.. Wikipedia

Maybe then we would have a world where the many wouldn’t have to be down so the few could be up, where there is enough for all, and no one has to lose so someone else can win.

A world like that would be a wonderful fairy tale. It would delight me to live in that story.