My friend Ashlee is a fan of the television show Once Upon a Time. She told me all about it and said I should watch it, so when the first season became available on Netflix, I decided to try it. I fell in love and zipped through it in two or three weeks, then waited impatiently for season two to start. (It began on September 30! Yay!!)
The entire premise and storyline of the show revolves around fairy tales - Cinderella, Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio, etc. Traditional fairy tales depend on magic, and the versions in this show all depend on similar and very important magic transactions. So one can easily say the show is basically about magic.
Now, in real life there's no such thing as magic. I believe there are angels, demons, miracles, and black magic or witchcraft (among other things not of earth), but the kind of magic from Once Upon a Time is fictional. Two qualities in real life resemble magic, though, and those are peace and love.
Peace and love are like magic in that they're all universally desired. It's almost a joke these days that anyone, anywhere would say what this world needs most is world peace. And there are tons of popular songs talking about how everybody wants to love, all you need is love, love makes the world go round, et cetera, et cetera. Nobody wants to be completely unloved and at war with everyone else. Magic - well, name one person you know who would turn down any and all forms of magic.
Another similarity is that peace, love, and magic are all mysterious and unattainable in some way. There's no specific formula for peace or love, and each love story or magic spell is different, unique. Nobody can explain scientifically or logically how love works, or why it doesn't. Nobody can give a definite, authoritative step-by-step guide to reaching and maintaining peace. Nobody can explain why putting some river water and one of your hairs into a magic bottle results in a potion that will erase your memories of your lost love. And love, peace, and magic are all things that are neither guaranteed to nor achieved by everyone.
The number-one most repeated phrase on Once Upon a Time is "Magic always comes with a price," or some variation of that. It's said at least once in almost every episode, and without fail ignored until the characters realize the gravity of the warning too late.
So what's the point here? Peace and love always come with a price. In love, that's subconsciously an accepted fact in most cases. We must compromise and sacrifice and learn to live with, appreciate, and consider someone else. That's what love, true love, is. So the price of love is giving up our desires and our place as number one in our minds.
But when it comes to peace, the price is more risky. The price of peace is giving up opinions and beliefs so that we're in agreement with others. In some quarrels, fights, and even wars this price is worth the peace. For example, when my brothers fight, the only way they'll reach peace is if they give up the belief that they're right and the other person's wrong. That belief isn't worth the fight, so this is a price they should pay.
World peace, on the other hand, is a greater peace and therefore has a greater price. It requires that we give up our beliefs and convictions, our opinions of right and wrong and how the world began and all those other religion-related concepts. It may also require that we give up our opinion that people can say what they want and even offend others without fear of punishment - and that's just an example.
So, while the world mostly believes that peace is the ultimate good or goal in life, I think the disastrous results of paying the necessary price are shown in many dystopian novels. The Hunger Games, Matched, and Swipe series are just three examples of a future in which peace has been obtained... at a price later regretted. Inevitably, the peace established by giving up freedoms leads to a rebellion to reclaim those freedoms. In other words, peace+no freedoms, or rebellion/war/lack of peace+freedoms. Pick one.
I guess these thoughts are just my way of trying to point out to the world how futile the goal of world peace is.
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