Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was an old woman who had spent her life chasing Love and Happiness, waiting to be successful.

She’d caught up with Happiness many times and had beautiful memories of when she’d spent time with Happiness at her side. Memories of happy times with her family as a child, spending time in the glorious outdoors, memories of time spent with her beautiful family, her beautiful children, and with beautiful friends.

The old woman believed in love

She believed in Love at first sight, because she’d fallen truly, madly and deeply in Love with her beautiful daughter the instant they first met. And she knew that true Love was real, because she loved her son with the fierceness and ferocity of a lioness.

She Loved her husband and their quiet life, their lovely neighbours and friends and the quiet serenity of spring awakenings, lazy summer holidays, autumn breezes and cosy winter nights.

The old woman found Love and Happiness in drawing. She’d always loved to draw when she was a little girl, drawing pictures while her mum read bed time stories, of animals and birds, trees and flowers.

But Love and Happiness didn’t always stick around and could disappear in an instant, with no warning, like a puff of smoke. Sometimes the old woman forgot about them. When days became filled with the drudgery of being a grown-up, with an endless conveyor belt of washing and cleaning, cooking and chores. With the endless hustle and the endless scroll. With sitting in traffic jams, in meetings, at a desk in an office. With the endless churn of corporate life, building a career, where success was measured by a job title, a salary, a certificate.

Stolen moments

She snatched moments with Love and Happiness whenever she could in her drawings, sharing thoughts and feelings, capturing moments and memories in her art. But the snatched moments were never enough and she grew old longing for a day when she could spend all her time with Love and Happiness, through her drawings, when she could finally be successful.

She longed for a time when there were no chores to do, when the nagging interruptions of life didn’t constantly stifle her heart’s desire and she could draw and draw with nothing to get in the way of creating and creativity…..

Just a little bit of magic

Then one day, she stumbled across an old spell that contained a tiny bit of magic. As she read the spell, the magic unfolded in her mind, she realised she didn’t need to chase Love and Happiness. They had been there all along, hiding in the everyday little wonders that often go overlooked. Hiding in the fun and friendships with colleagues at work, the satisfaction of a job well done, in the enjoyment and connection of seeing the snippets of her friends lives in the social scroll. Hiding in the smell of fresh laundry, the calmness of a tidy house, the smiles of her family enjoying their dinner, the comfort of snuggling down into clean sheets after a day filled with all the little pieces that fit together so beautifully to make her one wild and precious life.

She whispered to the spell and it whispered back. It whispered that Love and Happiness weren’t only contained in one thing. It whispered that in longing for a time free of distractions to pursue Love and Happiness when nothing would get in the way of her creativity, she was missing the very essence of what inspired her in the first place.

That in the very things that she was longing to be rid of, Love and Happiness dwelt, and without them, there would be no creativity, no flashes of inspiration, no moments or memories to capture.

It whispered that the everyday little overlooked wonders of her life were the very things that created the inspiration for her drawings, that made them unique. It whispered that her ability to create the breath-taking and unforgettable, the extraordinary and irresistible magic in her drawings that she longed for, lay in embracing all the little pieces of her wondrous life.

As the spell whispered its magic, the years fell away and she was a young woman again, with years of life still to live.

She looked out at the beauty of the world, and she looked inward at all the beauty of her life and knew that Love and Happiness had always been with her and there was no need to wait to be successful, because she already was, and she lived happily ever after.