Walt Disney, the Inspiration to Form a Better Life?

 by: Neil Millar

You, like many others, may have come to this article because you want more from life. In this sense, you and I may be alike because we’re searching for greater happiness and a stronger sense of fulfillment.

If you are someone in your thirties or older, and perhaps western, then you, like me, may have read enough adventure stories or seen enough Walt Disney to have been heartened by the stories of ugly guys, like the beast in Beauty and the Beast, winning the beauty, Belle. I don’t know about you, but that story gave me hope!

And maybe you relate to the heroics of Robin Hood who stood no nonsense, not even from the baddies in charge while King Richard crusaded. And Robin, in between robbing the rich and dishing it out to the poor, still had time to get his work-life balance right. In between robbing the rich and dishing it out to the poor he still had the time to party with his mates and date the fairest maiden in the land. The old rogue!

Maybe you loved the never-grow-old attitude of Pan, willed Hercules to conquer all and craved the day that you could leave school and set off through the forest of life, whistling and singing as merrily as one of the Seven Dwarfs, as you headed your way to a job that made your heart sing with joy!

And maybe, like me, now you’ve grown up, you realise that the world is not quite the way you imagined it in your youth: Cinderella has not pulled up outside your home in her pumpkin carriage, nor is Snow White cooking dinner for you when you get home from the office after a day working for a guy who would find himself in steaming hot water if he had a nose like Pinocchio.

Well I don’t know about you, but I felt a little disgruntled and let down with the way life turned out after such a romantic, adventurous childhood heavily laden with dreams.

Disgruntled by the time I hit my mid-twenties? More like disconnected: divorce, obesity, financial troubles and abuse had all gone on in my life by then and I suppose in a way I did feel like a couple of the dwarfs – grumpy and sleepy! Maybe your experience is similar, maybe a little different, slightly better or worse, but I’m sure we can empathise with each other and maybe even share a little feeling of disillusionment with life in general.

But this word “disillusionment”… it makes me wonder… It makes me wonder how I came to be disillusioned. Because to come to a place of “disillusionment” must mean I had an “illusion” in the first place. And I guess that this illusion might have been shaped by the wonders of Disney and the hopes of romance and magic in a future and the values set by the society of the time: work hard for a living and marry for life – in other words grow up, be a hero and marry a princess.

But what are your illusions, my new friend? What did you hope to have found in life before you stumbled on my article? Who did you hope to be? Who did you hope to love? And where did it all go wrong?

But I have some other questions for you before you go: what if all that experience has come to you for your greater good? What if you could understand it? What if you could use it? What if you could rise above it? What if you could now become that hero you always dreamed you would be and reconnect with that world of romance, adventure and wonder?

What if everything in your life had a purpose? What if you have a life purpose? What if that life purpose were to set out with an illusion, find the opposite of that illusion – disillusionment – and then rediscover the original illusion so you could ultimately experience the true magic and wonder of life and live happily ever after?

Perhaps all the difficulty is worthwhile. Perhaps all our troubles have true meaning, my friend and perhaps we are now ready to experience the magic this world has to offer. I guess we must also remember that even Walt Disney himself had his challenges: I understand he slept rough in his office because he couldn’t afford accommodation and even had no shoes left to wear when he finally got invited to a meeting that changed his life, and all of ours.