Sometimes the world just frowns at you. If everything can go wrong…chances are it will. But it’s not until you savour the crap that life throws at you, that you can truly enjoy the best that it decides to shower you with at times. Some of us are as they say ‘cursed’ it’s almost as though the world has a chip on its shoulder with them. But in the end, there must be some hope for them somewhere!
I particularly like the story of the Tin Soldier. “It’s just a story” some of you might say, but whenever I read a story, I try to apply it to real life. You see there’s always a subconscious meaning to every story told. There is always a second meaning in everything we do or say in life. Some people argue that they tell it like it is. Well yes, to some extent that is possible. If a glass sits on a table, anyone can shout out to the person in the next room that a glass is sitting on this table. Asked which colour the glass is, the person may then choose to give any colour they see it as. It could be green or maybe bottle green, or maybe bottle green and half full, or half empty to the pessimist! I guess I’ve always stood by the notion that, everyone perceives the world in a different manner and that is why I love my job.
I get to write songs about anything I choose. I get to relate a story just the way I want to. No inhibitions. I get to talk about something which people might experience and know that someone out there, can feel the same way, relate to what I say or even disagree with me completely. That is the beauty of life. The way all of us are born into this world of ever changing opportunities. How all of us struggle in some way or another. It’s not always about class, money or luck and something called ove does play quite a specific role!
With Valentine’s just round the corner, I am almost tempted to throw myself into writing a piece smothered with the illusion of red roses and pink cotton candy. But real love isn’t that now is it? To me real love is what makes us a person. It’s finding the half to make your whole. It’s knowing that the person you’re with will watch your back no matter what. Knowing that he/she respects you. Feeling wanted or desired or loved by ANYONE, not just your partner is what keeps us alive.
It keeps us fighting to survive, live and most of all want to share the world with that person. ‘The Brave Tin Soldier’ story by Hans Christian Anderson, is a story of a tin soldier, who arrived incomplete in a box, given to a little boy for his birthday. The soldier was incomplete because there was not enough cast iron to make him, so one-legged he stood there on the boy’s desk.
That same day he saw a ballerina figure sitting on the same desk. With her leg hitched up in ‘arabesque’ style he was misled into thinking she shared his same defect and fell in love. That night an ugly toy troll warned him to stay away from the beautiful ballerina, as it would be the road to his demise. Ignoring the troll, he continued to court the ballerina, until one day the Troll knocked the soldier out of the window into the street below. Two boys put him into a paper boat and he falls into a gutter and was washed away to the drains and into open sea. A fish swallowed him up and the soldier found himself in the belly of this fish in mid ocean.
The twist to the story happens when the fish is caught and taken back to a household, cooked and opened….. The Tin soldier staring back at the little boy in his plate. For some odd reason the little boy throws the tin soldier into the flames in the stove, a draught blows the ballerina into the fire with him and they both perish in the flames together. The maid then finds that the tin soldier has melted into a heart.
How ironic that life has this way of giving us all these emotions. Love on day, hurt the next, hope the other. It is an inexplicable journey that is laden with traps, pathways, and experiences that are best enjoyed with the people we truly love. Happy Valentine to all of you!