Somehow, without reading it until now, I knew the story of Peter Pan!… Don’t we all know it? We do, because Peter Pan lies within us!…We heard lines from this book written by James M. Barrie, we’ve seen images from Finding Neverland, we’ve had, the lucky ones of us at least, nice storytellers that kept saying to little us that once, back in time, there used to be a little boy, as little as we were back than, that didn’t want to grow up…and we couldn’t understand his reasoning! But of course we wanted to grow up!!! Growing-up, at that age, seemed an absolute experience! Nothing could have hurt us once we reached adulthood, we’d be invincible, and brave, we thought…
And then, in just one moment, we see ourselves old. Well, not so old. Adult old only! And we remember some words from the story of that boy surrounded by fairies. And you know what, we reread the story, or even read it for the first time as it should, and we discover that Peter Pan is more than a dream! We discover that maybe this book wasn’t meant for children to be read by, but for adults to remember and not to forget the beauty of life and dreams, of childhood, motherhood and stories all around us.
Such an amazing book! It took me a while to see the truth behind it!
…
She asked where he lived.
„Second star to the right, ” said Peter, „and then straight on till morning.”
„What a funny address!”
„You just think lovely wonderful thoughts,” Peter explained, „and they lift you up in the air.”
„Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.”
You see children know such a lot now, they soon don’t believe in fairies, and every time a child says, ‘I don’t believe in fairies’, there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours in fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness.
He did it because there is a saying in Neverland that, everytime you breathe, a grown-up dies; and Peter was killing them off vindictively as fast as possible.
„Oh, no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams.”
„Do you know”, Peter asked „why swallows build in the eaves of houses? It is to listen to the stories. O Wendy, your mother was telling such a lovely story…”
„To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
„Because I am a grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way. ” „Why do they forget the way?” „Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.”
„Peter, said Wendy the comforter, „I should love you in a beard; and Mrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he repulsed her. „Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man.”
I expect he was right, for fairies don’t live long, but they are so little that a short time seems a good while to them.
In time they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.
Do you believe?
Mirela's Mood 