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Insights from a Fairy Tale

    I recently saw the new movie Cinderella, a friend of mine had suggested a night out and really wanted to see it. I had seen the trailer and while I remember thinking I would be okay with going and seeing it, another part of me also thought, really do we not have enough Cinderella movies yet? Clearly not because this one had something I somehow had missed.
    I cried, when I watched Cinderella for the first time, and in the week since it has been released I have gone back to see it again. Both times I cried, not because it was sad or because I am the type of girl to just bawl through chic flick romances. It was because in this telling of Cinderella I felt more personal understanding to the story than I had ever before felt in my life. Growing up people had always said out of all the Disney princesses I was most like Cinderella, which sadly was my least favorite Disney princess. There's nothing wrong with the original telling, I just never cared for it either, I didn't feel anything personal about it.
    That changed this time, but I didn't just see that it was a story that applied to me, but a story that applied to everybody. We all have losses inside ourselves, we all have a villain inside ourselves, and we all have a part of us that tries so hard to carry our burdens and be strong because we know people are relying on us, yet secretly praying that there will be someone else out there that will love us enough to see us for who we are beneath all of the soot and grime of self depreciation, and self doubt that life can heave upon us.
    I won't tell the story line, we all know it well, and if someone really cared for it they can go investigate of their own accord. But there was a moment at the ball before Ella enters that she stopped and says to the coachman "Mr. Lizard I am afraid, I am only a girl, not a princess." his reply is "And I am only a Lizard, enjoy it while it lasts." The point behind this is, we are all "ONLY" something. We can't let that stop us every time, if we stop when we are afraid we will never make to the most meaningful things in this life. Moments of doubt and hesitation always hit us before we find something great, or become something great. If we always believe that we are only so good, or only so smart, or only so brave than I think we are going to be keeping ourselves from our dreams. Like I said we all have a villain inside ourselves and usually we are our own villain. We are all human, but our definition of ourselves should never be the word "only". Make the most of things, take chances, you never know what they may become.
    Some of the greatest secrets of life are the simplest secrets, if only we could remember to apply them in the moments of intense pressure when they would do us the most good. I believe that most secrets remain secrets because we forget about them in the moments that matter most. We forget the little insights that would aide us most in the times of our greatest need. The story of Cinderella was beautiful not only was she kind to those she loved, but to those she had no reason to love, she became who she was through being kind and loving not just in times of happiness and ease, but in the times of intense adversity, and loneliness.
    We all have our own story and in each of our stories there will be lines, paragraphs and sometimes even full chapters that have pain and sorrow in them, we won't like every word written on the page as we are not the only author, the people round us in our lives also contribute to our story, but it is what we become and who we discipline ourselves into during those times that will influence what comes in the following pages and chapters, we can fill every space allotted to us with hope and light and belief in a better future, or with doubt. What we fill the spaces with will determine where our story leads, and eventually it will influence how we feel when the last page of the story of our lives is turned.
     In the end it all reminds me of a quote by Elder Uchtdorf " Isn't that what we all desire: to be heroes and heroines of our own stories; to triumph over adversity; to experience life in all it's beauty; and, in the end, to live happily ever after?"

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