And We Lived Happily Ever After
... what is "happily ever after". It would certainly be an easier sell for the public – happily-ever-afters are so uncomplicated, while stories where the princess does not get the prince are much more difficult to explain to your child, because it would mean explaining about life, about different routes to happiness and about compromise. ... Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid has the capacity to teach us about sacrifice, and about choosing goodness and what is morally and ethically right over personal desires, even over one’s own life. ... Most of the time, there is just one category of people, who can alternate between "good" and "bad" according to the choices they make. ... The original story has far more to teach us about real life and the pursuit of happiness than Disney’s pretty tale. ... Have we, as a society or in different pockets of society, brought into being a myth of what the constitution says and does not say, until we do not recogni...