This page hosted by
Get your ownFree Home Page
This is a story that I'd like to tell. It's a fairy tale, about a princess in a castle, but it's a true story all the same. It goes like this:
Once upon a time there was a youg princess who sat alone in her room and cried because all the other children teased her and her parents didn't understand and for many other reasons. In her hurt she cried out "I wish everyone would just leave me alone." And so, in order to make her wish come true, she began to build a castle. She built the walls tall and thick and strong and repelled all who tried to enter untill they stopped trying. She peopled her castle with fantasy creatures and perfect friends and subjects who came when she called and left when she told them to, and so she passed the years, alone.
But the obedience of the imagination grows stale and the friendship of fantasy is not satisfying and so, from time to time she walked the battlements and looked out on the world that all her windows had long ago been closed to. Seeing the lives of those on the outside, how they had friends and family and love, she became lonely. Surrounded by love and laughter, but separated from such things by her walls, she became lonelier and lonelier untill at last she could stand it no longer. She ran down to the gate and pounded on it shouting "Let me out, let me out, won't someone please come and free me?" But no one came. At last, exhausted and despairing, she sank down beside the gate and wept.
Then she heard a voice, soft and kind, calling "My child, come out. Come out and be loved."
"Please," she replied, "I want so badly to come out, but the door is locked and barred and I cannot."
Then the voice said again, "Oh my child, open the gate and come out, for I cannot come in."
"But it is locked and barred." she repeated. "I cannot open it."
And the voice said "My poor child, look up and see. I cannot open the gate, only you can, for it is barred from the inside."
Then she looked up from where she lay against the gate and her heart sank, for it was true, the gate was locked and barred from the inside. No one could ever come and rescue her. Then in utter despair she fled sobbing, fleeing with broken heart to the uppermost tower in the castle where she lay down and cried herself to sleep in the lonely dark.
She awoke as the sun rose amid pink and gold clouds. Its brilliant light slanted in through a small window, the last one left opened in the castle. The light glittered and sparkled off a small object that the princess held tightly in one hand. A tiny thing that she had always had, but had some how never noticed.
Seeing that bright sparkle her heart danced for joy and she arose smiling. With a delighted laugh and a light heart she went down towards the gate, skipping and laughing and throwing open windows as she went, a golden key clutched in one hand.
And so you have heard my story. And this is the moral it tells: if ever you find yourself trapped and despairing, look closely in your hand and check all your pockets, for chances are it is you who owns the key.
Get your ownFree Home Page
