What I learned from Disney

"What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it's supposed to be"

When I was growing up, I knew what my life was going to look like...I would live with a happy family, go to school, have good friends, go to university to study something I loved, probably fall in love while I was at uni, find a secure job that I enjoyed every day, get married by the time I was 25, pop out a few kids and live happily ever after.

It was a good plan
                          ...if only life had followed the script.

I didn't plan for my parents to get divorced, to have to move to another school because of bullying, to dislike uni so much that I contemplated dropping out, to move to the other side of the world, to still be single, to be made redundant.

I'm not trying to make you feel sorry for me, not at all. I don't feel sorry for me, because I guess what I'm saying is that, just because things haven't turned out as I imagined they would, doesn't mean they haven't turned out in the best possible way, the way they were meant to.

You know what I think? I think a lot of the pictures in our heads of what lives is supposed to look like come from Disney movies. It's so easy to blur the line between real life and 'happily ever after' lives when that's what we watch growing up.

Here's a quick run down of things I learned from Disney movies...

Cinderella - if you just accept all the bad stuff that happens, eventually the good stuff will come.
Unfortunately, the amount of bad stuff you go through doesn't determine the amount of good stuff you'll get. Life just doesn't work that way. Sometimes you actually have to work for the good stuff and stand up for yourself in the bad.
Also, glass shoes are going to give you blisters.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - a kiss fixes all your problems. Well, maybe not just a kiss, but true love's first kiss. Um, no. Sometimes it just gives you more problems.
And it's usually not ok for a girl to live with seven men.

The Little Mermaid - you need to change your appearance, give up your talents, your home and family to get the guy. But surely it's all worth it, because that's all that matters, right? Or not.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - the ugly guy won't get the girl. Sure, he can be the hero and save her, but she's still going to run off with the hot one. Good old Disney, all about the beauty.

The beautiful princess waits around for years until her prince comes to rescue her. They kiss and then her life is complete and all that's left is happily ever after.

No wonder we have such distorted images of how life should be. So, what do we do with that? I think we just need to know that movies, any movies, are a product of some scriptwriter's creativity. The characters say the right things because it's in the script. Don't you hate it when you have a conversation planned out in your head and the other person doesn't stick to the script?

I love Disney movies and I'm not going to stop watching them but we also need to step back into reality, to accept that life doesn't always turn out how we thought it would, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful or fulfilling.

Maybe happily ever afters aren't all they're cracked up to be.