every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
once upon a time
these are the light tales of legend and myth. not the Beowulfs, not the sagas, not the Greek gods lightly aiding one group of humans or another. once upon a time means you are safe in a terrifying world. cats may talk or fight with swords, a dragon may complain or even knock over a castle, but somewhere there's a hero and he or she does not arrive with an army or even a troop. this is comforting. it means the trouble, however hopeless it seems to us, is our size. if we had been born to armor and capes, we could have righted the realm and won the princess' or the prince's heart. if we had been born smart and witty and funny, we could have outsmarted the troll. but the point is, whether or not we could fix what needs fixing, someone can, one person. there's not a problem a city has that one person could fix. certainly no state and no nation has a problem a knight errant could correct. the world is horrible in ways that require many people working together just to make a problem better, less hurtful. once upon a time soothes. we can relax into that world. we can go to sleep clutching that book. in the morning the real world will be there again, but for a few hours we held onto once upon a time and its promise of a fixable world.
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