When you're young, I think every little girl has high-flying dreams of being a princess. Some girls want to be asian empresses of ginger and jasmine, having love affairs with chamomile tea and dancing precariously on tip-toes. Others want to be French royalty in baby blue, taking honey baths in the high courts of Versailles. Still yet are those who dream of being Indian princesses, belly-dancing under the full moon while visions of Ganesh and Krishna turn through their heads, rustling like the pages of the Bhagavad Gita. Whoever it is we see ourselves as when we close our eyes, in one way or another we all have our flings with royalty.
As we grow up into modern-day queens of the concrete jungle, those royal dreams seem to subside. We put away our pink lip gloss and stop practicing the waltz in our backyards - we fold up that spectacular champagne dress that we promised we would wear to all those royal balls and throw away our favorite plastic pearls. We trade in bunches of pink tulle and translucent sequins for pencil-skirts and oxford heels. We turn our backs to that shimmering fairy-tale world and we enter the strange and unknown - reality.
Maybe it's not that we shun our childhood, our silliness and our dreams, maybe it's just that the little girls inside of us can't take it - maybe they see the world that we're entering, seemingly devoid of everything sugary-sweet, and maybe they're the ones who curl up and wait patiently for the return of our dreamworld. Maybe even they can't spot the everyday magic our world possesses.
The trick of it all is that once we leave our fantasies, we do become those global princesses. Suddenly we're out on our own, making choices, facing each day; we become these strong, independent women in designer dresses and silken pearls. We realize that our childhood alter-egos were never just about bubble baths and tulle, but rather graceful warriors of their respective lands who just so happened to dabble in royalty. It occurs to us that our teeny-bopper dreamers were always there inside while we faced reality, pulling in everything beautiful like planets in orbit, and that they were the ones who kept that childish charm in our lives.
Standing on the street, or in coffee shops, or over dinner, we realize what life-long dream we have fulfilled. We stand over mirrors and see Japanese geishas. Or Rococo darlings. Or caramel yoginis.
Our princesses have never left. They have only grown.
Always,
Penelope ♥
2 comments:
awesome post! once you realize the worlds have merged, you are freer.
i have absolutely fallen in love with this passage, especially the truth of it all.
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