GLASS SLIPPERS : Lessons of ‘life’ from the Cindrella’s fairytale…

Author: Somaprabhe.

Covid has hit us like an unexpected tsunami. We all were confined to the four walls of our houses for almost 2-3 months, which would have been difficult to imagine in normal times. Each one of us found our own methods to cope with this 24×7 free time we had at hand, isn’t it?

Well, I loved every second of this quarantine spending time with my son. One day I had the pleasure of sitting with my son and watching Cinderella movie. This particular fairy tale has always fascinated me because of glass slippers. At that young age, when wearing Bata sandals was a luxury for me, it was very interesting to dream about wearing Glass Slippers. Sometimes, I used to day dream as to how it would feel against my feet and whether I will be able to walk on those high heels or not. Just like every young girl, I always used to love reading stories about princesses. But there was one story which particularly caught my fascination, and it was the Cinderella story. It was not because of the Prince; it was because of the Glass Slippers the fairy godmother gives to Cinderella.

Years later, I realized that life is quite different than the fairytales and it’s a bit harder and harsher too. Eventually, the reality of life took over the dreams of a fairytale. So, obviously I was very excited to watch the movie and relive my childhood. But after the movie ended, I was fascinated by the motto followed by Cinderella in this movie, ‘Have Courage and Be Kind and believe in Magic’. It was what her mother would have encouraged her to believe in right form childhood… I started telling my son also to be kind to others and to never lose courage. Then suddenly my son said, “Mamma you always tell to be kind to others, but why can’t we be kind to our self also?”. I was lost for words. I said “Very true you need to be kind to yourself along with being kind to others” with a smile. This thought starting running in my mind, ‘aren’t we always taught to be kind to others? Why we are never taught to be kind to our self too?’

During corona the concept of self-love started appearing everywhere. Is being kind to our self as important as self-love? If something goes wrong in life or even after putting tons of efforts a particular project has failed, shouldn’t we be kind to our self and think, ‘It’s okay, it’s not my fault let me try again and excel’. Should we feel bad and go to depression just because something was taken away from us or we failed at something? I feel we should not wait until others become kind to us and give us courage. Why cannot we our self have courage and be kind to our self and believe in a little magic?

 It is life, nothing comes easy nor does everything happen as we have planned. So we should be ready for both success and failure. We need to teach our kids that just because they have scored fewer marks or didn’t pass some entrance exam it doesn’t make them a loser. If you don’t get into a particular course or a college it’s not the end of the world. Every problem on this earth has a solution. I recently came across an article which states that on an average 381 deaths have happened by suicide last year. And even more alarming is that student suicides are rising like never before. Life is more important than any degree or marks. We need to teach our kids to live life a little every day, as we have got only one life. We have to lead them by example. When parents change their attitude slowly, the society also will become progressive.

Let’s give assurance to our younger generation to always go ahead and whenever you fall by chance, we are right here to catch you. Stand back and plunge ahead again. Don’t be scared of failing. Have courage and fight. Keep fighting until you get what you dream of. So, let’s Have courage and Be Kind……and also believe in a little magic 🙂 and LIVE.  

One thought on “GLASS SLIPPERS : Lessons of ‘life’ from the Cindrella’s fairytale…

  1. In life, it is very important to love yourself first before you can love others, there is no way you can be kind to others when you are not kind to yourself. When you love yourself, there is no way you can hurt others. It is true suicide is on a rise and it is alarming that the young generation are the ones committing suicide. Question arises, have parents failed in their duty of parenting?, is it all about society that we live in?
    Covid- 19 has changed alot and life won’t be the same again, people have and will continue to lose jobs, because of this many have committed suicide because they can’t make ends meet. I believe that God gave us hands and mental ability to be able to work hard and make ends meet, those employers worked hard and they made jobs for you and me. You can also do something from scratch to employ others. But all in all, we live this life once and we aught to make the best out of it. ” it’s rather better to teach a child how to fish than to give him a fish”. Sucide is not the anwer.

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