Brainwashed

Charles Perrault

I believe we’ve all been brainwashed. And it’s been going on since our childhood. It’s not our parents’ fault because they were victims, too. 

It’s Charles Perrault’s fault. And the Brothers Grimm. And the fairy tales they wrote.

In many of their stories, the prince must rescue the princess. The princess must sit, or lie, idly locked in a tower, or a glass coffin-waiting, waiting, hoping, praying. The widower must find another wife to be mother to his daughter because he can’t be bothered or is incapable and once he’s found the woman, he then either dies or vanishes into the Netherstoryworld never to be heard from again. And at the end of the story everyone lives happily ever after. Except the villain, of course.

There are some important lessons in those tales. After all, isn’t that what good, solid literature is about? In them, we learn that:

1. Good will always win in the end no matter how long or what it takes.
2. Karma is a bitch.
3. We simply can’t be happy on our own. By ourselves. Solo.

The Brothers Grimm

And if we claim to be happy on our own, no one believes us. Because they’re brainwashed too. Well, in actuality there are some who allow us to simply be. But, behind closed doors, tongues sometimes wag, because it goes against nature. I mean Cinderella, Snow White, et al. got their princes and lived happily ever after. The Real Little Mermaid didn’t get her prince and was turned into sea foam. How can one possibly be happy as sea foam?

Did you ever notice the original writers never wrote a sequel?

I bet Cindy farts in bed. I’d be willing to bet Snow White turned a little Gray in chapter three of her sequel when the prince came home late once too often after doing whatever it is princes do. Or whoever they do.

And for LGBTQ kids growing up we simply switch the code when coming out. “Now, am I supposed to rescue a prince or be rescued by one?” I was a bit confused as to which direction to take.

So, the object of our happily-ever-after simply switches gender when we come out.

But, the brainwashing doesn’t go away. We still feel the compulsion to find someone because we are supposed to even if society and our families disapprove. "I’m going to find my happy ever after, damn it, even if I have to sleep with everyone to do so."

Even the Greeks had a creation myth around our search for completion:

Plato writes in his Symposium that initially humans were created with two heads, four arms, four legs and were both male and female so we self-reproduced. Evidently, we got a bit uppity and began storming Mount Olympus and Zeus was none too pleased. He wiggled his magic finger splitting us in half, forever condemning us to an eternal search for ‘our other half’ because we need that other half to feel complete, to feel whole, to be reunited and it feels so good!

But, hold your chariots!

Hear me out.

When Zeus wiggled his magic finger, staff, or whatever, and split us, he made us complete physically, meaning our minds and hearts are already complete as they are.

Okay, maybe emotionally we miss that other half-of-us who wanted to turn left when we wanted to go right. Or, who wanted Athenean food when we wanted Spartan. Maybe we miss those late night talks bonding over a glass of ouzo. (This is a Greek myth after all.)

He may have split the body into two complete entities, but he split the original soul in half. And it’s the soul that is searching for reunification.

(Yes, I recognize I’m hinting at a soulmate but we’ve been brainwashed there, too, by Hollywood’s ideals. That’s another post for another day, Brainwashing 2, coming soon! Stay tuned!)

The brainwashing is in the brain where we do our thinking. It’s our brain that is conditioned to think we need someone else to be whole. It’s our brain that gets us into trouble by thinking that the other half is just around the corner. Or the next one. And we start following a trail of bread crumbs to hopefully lead us out of the Dark Forest of Loneliness into the Kingdom of Wholeness.

The stories that we read or listened to over and over and over programmed us into believing we need someone to be whole. Kind of like a cult.

The answer here, I believe, is to deprogram ourselves, to remove the mask of this illusion of necessity. It’s time we listen to our soul. We already have all our pieces, we just need to put them together ourselves. We need no one else to complete us. By the way, is there a guarantee that the other person will have the pieces we think we are missing?

But, to find someone who complements us would be a whole different story.