Who knew a story written for children would one day become the part of the political idiom of adults. "The Emperor has no Clothes", shouted the child in his innocence. He saw what everyone else did, but little did he know in his innocence that reality can be subjective when viewed through the prism of adult lenses that have been dimmed by layers upon layers of power structures based on hierarchy.
Above all else, Hans Christian Anderssen was a novel folklorist. His stories, had a very deep impact on me as a child. Out of all of his stories the one that struck me most was the Little Match Girl. The verses from the hym, "The Valley glows with many a rose and there we meet the sacred child" now as then have an almost enigmatic effect on me. The sheer eloquence of story telling on the part of Anderssen brought a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye.
This was afterall the story of a girl and her wild imaginations that took her places despite all of the misery surrounding her. There's a kind of romanticism to that kind of a story where a person creates that cocoon to shelter oneself from the storms of the civilized world. A place that deep and warm, a place of joy which remains untouched.
Most of us don't realize the power of storytelling when this has clearly been one of the oldest forms of communication. Certainly many of us in this age of the machine don't realize that our lives our stories that start when we are born into this world and end with our passing away. What happens in between is a story. Some of these stories are passed on from one generation to the other while others are forgotten soon as the flame of life is extinguished.
I for one believe that its not our techonologists and machinists who aught to be held in high esteem, but those of us who can tell stories. I mean imagine, if a group of beings from another planetary system - far more advanced than us were to land upon our plannet what would we have to offer them? Our technology? Somehow I doubt our tools would be more than toys, or maybe not even that, to them. What then would tell who we are and whence we come from. Our stories, possibly. Maybe that would enthrall them, possibly they would have some of their own to share with us.
