Fatmanonice
Banned via Warnings
Link to original post: [drupal=5304]Lessons from a Pastel Pink Pony: Growing Old While Staying Young [/drupal]
Three days ago I witnessed something that I thought I would never see again. My parents came down to Cape to visit me and I was surprised to find my dad doing something he used to tell me not to do all the time. My dad was playing a video game, Angry Birds, on his I-Phone. It was one of those things that made me smile on the inside for three reasons. As I said before, my dad spent a lot of time in my childhood and teenage years telling me video games were an enormous waste of time and that I should spend my time doing more “productive” things. Second, it was touching to see that my dad had finally come full circle. Back in the early 90’s my dad was the one who introduced me to video games when I was only about three years old. My first video game was Donkey Kong on the Colecovision and I have very fond memories of my dad teaching me how to play it. It wouldn’t be until about 16 years later when my dad would give video games another shot (albeit short lived) after I brought home the Nintendo Wii after staying up all night in the freezing cold to get one on the day it launched. Third, it was good seeing my dad having fun with a simple game. As far back as I can remember my dad has been a man who has worked what a majority of jobs would call overtime on a near weekly basis and has a schedule crammed with meetings, functions, and gatherings. This is not to say that the concept of fun is a stranger to him but his hobbies are generally highly competitive (racquet ball) and/or strenuous (biking long distances) so it’s nice to see that he’s found something fun that doesn’t leave him a sore mess for days afterwards.
I feel that one of the longest standing battles that I’ve had with my parents throughout my life is trying to convince that my enthusiasm for video games and cartoons is perfectly okay. They’ll give me weird looks when they see me watching Cartoon Network and every Christmas they’ll ask me the same question when I ask for video games, “are you sure you don’t want something else?” They seem perplexed that after 14 years I’m still a big fan of Pokemon, after 19 years the Nightmare Before Christmas is still one of my favorite movies, and after 22 years I still regularly watch Nicktoons. Ever since middle school they have flat out asked at least once on an annual basis if I’m too old for these things and if it’s time to move on. As time has moved on though I’ve noticed that the concern of what I enjoy to do in my free time has become less of a family concern and more of a cultural concern. I personally believe that whatever people like and do in their own free time is their business and their business only as long as it doesn’t infringe upon the rights of other people but our society believes otherwise. Whatever people are interested in is placed under heavy scrutiny and surveillance because, supposedly, the possibility of any kind of social deviance is too much of a threat to ignore. There is one particular fanbase that I’d like to talk about that has caught the media’s attention in the past year because, like me, they enjoy something that society says they’re too old for. These people are called bronies.
What the heck is a brony, you ask? Bronies are male fans of the latest generation of the My Little Pony cartoon that came out about two years ago (female fans are referred to as pegasisters). As you would expect, the show was originally created for little girls and their parents but something unprecedented happened. Shortly after the show premiered it started to have a following of men between the age of 18 and 35. At first it was considered a fluke but then the fanbase exploded across the internet. Soon My Little Pony fan art, fan fiction, fan music, Facebook pages, Tumblr pages, memes, and entire websites started to pop up from fans all around the world. The fanbase has gotten so big, in fact, that major cities have even started to have their own My Little Pony conventions that draw in people by the thousands. I discovered this fanbase a little more than a year and a half ago thanks to a number of my brony and pegasister friends. At first I was highly skeptical but after about 5-6 months of Green Eggs and Ham style pestering from them, I caved in and decided to give it a shot by watching a few episodes they recommended. Much like the ending of Green Eggs and Ham, I found that I did like the show and within a week I watched all the episodes that had been released up until that point. I became a fan of the show and thus became a brony. Now you may be thinking, why would not only a 24 year old male like me enjoy a show designed for little girls but also hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people within my age demographic all across the globe? Many people look at this with curiosity, and sometimes horror, and ask themselves, “what’s the appeal?”
For me personally the appeal comes from a number of places. The writing is surprisingly good for most episodes, the animation is smooth and colorful, the musical numbers rival some of the best that Disney has put out, and the main characters are multidimensional (complete with glaring character flaws), relatable, and, most importantly, fun and likable. Keep in mind that all of this is coming from a cartoon that was originally designed to sell toys to grade school girls. Something that a lot of people know about me is that I’m a bit of an animation nut. Regardless of its country of origin, its age, or its intended demographic I will give most cartoons a shot simply because I have a deep appreciation for the art form. As such, I’ve watched a lot of cartoons in my time from the masterfully brilliant to the painfully awful. In my experience, most cartoons aimed at girls, let alone little girls, are borderline unwatchable and, off the top of my head, I can count the number of good “girl cartoons” I’ve seen before this show off one hand: Kim Possible, My Life as a Teenage Robot, and the Powerpuff Girls. They’re generally so bogged down with gender stereotypes (AKA being obnoxiously girly) that just watching a few minutes of them will probably give you a hernia if you’re a guy. This isn’t to say that My Little Pony doesn’t have moments that make you roll your eyes and wretch but, in a move I applaud the writers for, there’s usually a character that steps in and does it before you even get a chance to. It’s a show that rarely insults your intelligence and has a tendency to surprise its adult fans with subtle references to pop culture like Star Wars and even the Big Lebowski. It’s fun, funny, and even educational. All in all, it’s a well put together show that deserves the fanbase that it has but you’re probably wondering what it’s about anyways.
My Little Pony is set in the land of Equestria, a land inhabited by three species of talking, pastel colored ponies: earth ponies, pegasuses, and unicorns. The episodes revolve around a purple unicorn named Twilight Sparkle who moves to a town called Ponyville to learns lessons about friendship with the help of her friends (yes, it’s extremely girly and when I first heard the premise I smirked too but stay with me). As said, Twilight and her five friends are the main characters. Twilight is studious and clever but is easily stressed out thanks to being a perfectionist and being slightly OCD. Applejack is an orange earth pony who works on her family’s apple orchard “Sweet Apple Acres.” She has a thick southern accent, is very hard working, and considered to be one of the most reliable and trustworthy ponies in Ponyville. Despite this, she has a very hard time asking for help or admitting she’s wrong and she’s sometimes a little too “dingle-dingle-durr” (If you know what I mean) for her own good. Rainbow Dash is a blue pegasus with a rainbow colored mane and the tomboy of the group. She’s highly competitive and confident but this has the tendency to get the best of her when she overdoes it, turning her into an unapologetic loud mouth and sore loser. Rarity is a white unicorn who is a fashionista that runs her own clothing store (the Carousel Boutique) where she designs clothes. She’s generous, proper, and creative but a drama queen in every sense of the word, sometimes being hoity toity when trying to stand out and becoming outright neurotic if she gets a splash of mud on her. Fluttershy is a yellow pegasus who spends most of her time taking care of animals. She’s kind, soft spoken, and is always thinking of others but, because of this, she’s painfully shy and has a tendency to let people use her as a doormat (sometimes awakening her inner beast). Last is Pinkie Pie, a pink earth pony with hair that strongly resembles cotton candy who loves to throw parties and works at the town’s bakery, Sugar Cube Corner. She’s very friendly and fun loving but also extremely hyperactive, talkative, and nosy which tends to get under the skin of anyone who isn’t as manic as she is if they’re around her for too long. As you may have guessed from the title of the essay, this is the pony I wanted to focus on the most.
Pinkie is a favorite among the fans for a number of reasons. She’s random and crazy, regularly bending the laws of time and space to her will by pulling random objects out of nowhere from cannons to her pet baby alligator, running at supersonic speeds, eating things larger than herself in one bite, and suddenly appearing in places with little or no explanation. Unlike the rest of the cast, she often breaks the fourth wall reminiscent of the old Looney Tunes shorts. She always carries a song in her heart, letting them out in some of the show’s best musical numbers. She sometimes overbearing and annoying but it’s clear that she means well. She wants to be friends with everybody (even if they don’t want to in return) and her simple philosophy to life is to make people smile and laugh. The thing that strikes me the most about Pinkie’s personality and approach to life is that these don’t come from a little girl (or filly, as it were), they come from an adult. She’s unabashed about how she would hug the entire world if she could and it’s hard to not find her childlike cheeriness charming. She’s blissfully naïve but, at the same time, I kind of envy her for it if only because I feel she represents a side that most of us let go of much too easily.
I feel that adults constantly limit themselves when it comes to fun. Going off cultural standards, the only socially acceptable forms of fun for adults that stand out are sports, alcohol, and sex. Sports and exercise have a tendency to beat you up or turn into chores after a while. As I’ve gotten older alcohol has become less about having fun and more about finding a short term escape from my problems and trying to relieve stress. It becomes less about “hey this will be fun” and more “ugh… I totally need this…” It’s like getting a bad massage; you might feel like crap once it’s all over but when you’re getting worked over by Johnny Vicegrip or Johnny Walker it feels alright and it takes your mind off things. Sex is the final frontier when it comes to fun for adults but most people lack the boldness, imagination, and curiosity to take advantage of it, making it an awkward chore for when birthdays and nights where there isn’t anything good on TV roll around. All this being said, adults are generally pretty boring people. We let go of things we genuinely enjoy in an effort to appear more mature and “adult”, an act that can be juxtaposed with envying the dead. When you’re a kid you constantly think about wanting to grow up so you can have more freedom to do what you want but when we become adults we hardly do anything with the newfound freedoms we get. Adults live within limits, kids live to push theirs’.
I feel that adults too often get bogged down by their responsibilities. As we approach the end of high school or college we’re warned about the “Real World” as if it’s a cruel mistress that rides our bare back with sharpened stilettos and sandpaper panties. “These are the best years of your life,” they tell us. “Don’t waste them.” The grand irony, of course, being that all throughout these years we’re told to abandon most of things that make them the best years of our lives in effort to “grow up” and “become mature.” A lot of things kind of lose their souls in the process, turning favorite activities into chores, and all the while society nods its head as if this is the way things have to be. It’s really no wonder why so many adults are miserable and envy people younger than them. It’s still possible to have fun and laugh even if you now have bills to pay, mouths to feed, meetings to attend, and a home to maintain but a lot of people don’t think so. Happiness is seen as a weekend trip, not a state of mind, and a lot of people deprive themselves of it for the sake of keeping up appearances.
People like Pinkie Pie are among my favorite kind of people in the world. These are the kinds of people who start conversations with complete strangers in line at the grocery store, whose laughs are infectious and seem to light up a room, and who always seem to be in the best of spirits even in the worst of times. It’s argued that the people who try the hardest to make other people happy are the ones that hurt the most on the inside and I think that’s true but not for the reasons most people would give. I would say that it’s because the world is often cruel to them, calling them “immature”, “idealistic”, and “deluded” for pursuing the things that most of us don’t have the courage to and not staying in social norms most of us we wish we could break out of. The world often treats these people as deviants because when they’re told to quietly stand in line they want to play leapfrog instead. Despite their inner pain, they continue to smile because, as Pinkie Pie would say, “it fills her heart with sunshine all the while” just to make other people happy and have fun while doing it.
I think one of the saddest things to witness is seeing people who start off like Pinkie and eventually collapse under the rockslide of personal criticisms, responsibilities, and tragedies. Walt Disney is one of the best known examples of this. He started off as an idealistic man whose goal in life was to bring his boyhood fantasies to life and capture the joys and wonders of childhood not only on film but in several “magic kingdoms” across the United States. The man who set off to make “the happiest places on Earth” eventually became one of the most miserable men on Earth under all the stress and pressure that came with the pursuit. Shortly before the complete circulatory collapse caused by his carton a day habit that took his life, he was asked what he believed his greatest accomplishment was with the Disney Empire. He turned to the interviewer, his eyes cold and lifeless, and said with a deadpan expression “I’m just happy I was able to keep the whole damn thing together”, and probably proceeded to put out a cigarette on the interviewer’s cheek before giving him a swift kick in the pants, leaving him to sit alone in a dark executive office. Walt Disney died a bitter man, virtually friendless and largely unhappy with life despite becoming an American legend within his own lifetime whose creations still delight and inspire young and old around the world.
Those that are able to brush off the criticisms, adapt to the responsibilities, and overcome the tragedies while still being able to smile and laugh are the ones I believe should be revered the most. These are the Dalis, Mozarts, and Hensons of the world. These are the people who delight people with their quirkiness and creativity without really even trying. They simply want to be happy so they can make other people too and this, in turn, makes people around them feel the same way. These are the weirdos who baffle and annoy us with their silly grins and even sillier antics but, at the end of the day, we still find something irresistible about them. Their imaginations inspire us and help bring out our inner child. These are the people who make us laugh the loudest during their lives and cry the longest at their funerals. If you want one of the best examples of this, watch Jim Henson’s funeral on Youtube sometime. If Big Bird singing “It’s Not Easy Being Green”, Frank Oz suddenly breaking down in tears during the eulogy, and his coworkers coming on stage at the end and singing “Just One Person” to a teary eyed standing ovation of over a thousand people doesn’t move you, not much probably will. A vast majority of people never met him but they still feel touched by the man he was and the life he lived. These are the people who seem to magically create joy, happiness, and laughter in a world filled with sorrow, heartbreak, and ennui. These are the people who remember to “smile, smile, smile” even when the rest of us willingly forget. These are the people who are the liberators of our inner child, not tormentors who remind us of good days gone by. These are the people who we ought to strive to be, not to publically shame. Just as they wish to embrace the entire world in their arms, we should embrace them with open arms.
It’s amazing what you can learn from something as nonsensical as a talking, pink pony, isn’t it? Perhaps that’s the entire point though. Perhaps the point is that while there are those that wish to snuff out our sense of fun and wonder there are those that fight without making as much as a fist for us to keep them always, no matter our age and no matter the hardships life throws at us. Perhaps toys, cartoons, and video games aren’t as trivial as we often think them to be. Perhaps fun and wonder are not meant to be locked in the toy box when we grow up but to be carried with us every day of our lives. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter what makes you happy and what you have fun doing as long as you can share these feelings with others and help them feel the same. Perhaps this is why My Little Pony’s fanbase has gotten as big as it has, because it carries these simple messages that are relatable to all ages and cultures. This all being said, there’s nothing wrong with growing old as long as you actively try to retain the joys of your youth as time marches on. You might be accused of being a child along the way while others look on with scowls of disapproval and disbelief on their faces but perhaps this is one of the best compliments an adult can be given. As the old proverb says, “turn your face towards the sun and the shadows will always fall behind you” and, like Pinkie Pie, never forget to laugh and smile.
Fatmanonice, July 24th, 2012
“The most sophisticated people I know - inside they are all children.” –Jim Henson
“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”- Roald Dahl
“Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.” Theodore Giesel (Dr. Seuss)
Three days ago I witnessed something that I thought I would never see again. My parents came down to Cape to visit me and I was surprised to find my dad doing something he used to tell me not to do all the time. My dad was playing a video game, Angry Birds, on his I-Phone. It was one of those things that made me smile on the inside for three reasons. As I said before, my dad spent a lot of time in my childhood and teenage years telling me video games were an enormous waste of time and that I should spend my time doing more “productive” things. Second, it was touching to see that my dad had finally come full circle. Back in the early 90’s my dad was the one who introduced me to video games when I was only about three years old. My first video game was Donkey Kong on the Colecovision and I have very fond memories of my dad teaching me how to play it. It wouldn’t be until about 16 years later when my dad would give video games another shot (albeit short lived) after I brought home the Nintendo Wii after staying up all night in the freezing cold to get one on the day it launched. Third, it was good seeing my dad having fun with a simple game. As far back as I can remember my dad has been a man who has worked what a majority of jobs would call overtime on a near weekly basis and has a schedule crammed with meetings, functions, and gatherings. This is not to say that the concept of fun is a stranger to him but his hobbies are generally highly competitive (racquet ball) and/or strenuous (biking long distances) so it’s nice to see that he’s found something fun that doesn’t leave him a sore mess for days afterwards.
I feel that one of the longest standing battles that I’ve had with my parents throughout my life is trying to convince that my enthusiasm for video games and cartoons is perfectly okay. They’ll give me weird looks when they see me watching Cartoon Network and every Christmas they’ll ask me the same question when I ask for video games, “are you sure you don’t want something else?” They seem perplexed that after 14 years I’m still a big fan of Pokemon, after 19 years the Nightmare Before Christmas is still one of my favorite movies, and after 22 years I still regularly watch Nicktoons. Ever since middle school they have flat out asked at least once on an annual basis if I’m too old for these things and if it’s time to move on. As time has moved on though I’ve noticed that the concern of what I enjoy to do in my free time has become less of a family concern and more of a cultural concern. I personally believe that whatever people like and do in their own free time is their business and their business only as long as it doesn’t infringe upon the rights of other people but our society believes otherwise. Whatever people are interested in is placed under heavy scrutiny and surveillance because, supposedly, the possibility of any kind of social deviance is too much of a threat to ignore. There is one particular fanbase that I’d like to talk about that has caught the media’s attention in the past year because, like me, they enjoy something that society says they’re too old for. These people are called bronies.
What the heck is a brony, you ask? Bronies are male fans of the latest generation of the My Little Pony cartoon that came out about two years ago (female fans are referred to as pegasisters). As you would expect, the show was originally created for little girls and their parents but something unprecedented happened. Shortly after the show premiered it started to have a following of men between the age of 18 and 35. At first it was considered a fluke but then the fanbase exploded across the internet. Soon My Little Pony fan art, fan fiction, fan music, Facebook pages, Tumblr pages, memes, and entire websites started to pop up from fans all around the world. The fanbase has gotten so big, in fact, that major cities have even started to have their own My Little Pony conventions that draw in people by the thousands. I discovered this fanbase a little more than a year and a half ago thanks to a number of my brony and pegasister friends. At first I was highly skeptical but after about 5-6 months of Green Eggs and Ham style pestering from them, I caved in and decided to give it a shot by watching a few episodes they recommended. Much like the ending of Green Eggs and Ham, I found that I did like the show and within a week I watched all the episodes that had been released up until that point. I became a fan of the show and thus became a brony. Now you may be thinking, why would not only a 24 year old male like me enjoy a show designed for little girls but also hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people within my age demographic all across the globe? Many people look at this with curiosity, and sometimes horror, and ask themselves, “what’s the appeal?”
For me personally the appeal comes from a number of places. The writing is surprisingly good for most episodes, the animation is smooth and colorful, the musical numbers rival some of the best that Disney has put out, and the main characters are multidimensional (complete with glaring character flaws), relatable, and, most importantly, fun and likable. Keep in mind that all of this is coming from a cartoon that was originally designed to sell toys to grade school girls. Something that a lot of people know about me is that I’m a bit of an animation nut. Regardless of its country of origin, its age, or its intended demographic I will give most cartoons a shot simply because I have a deep appreciation for the art form. As such, I’ve watched a lot of cartoons in my time from the masterfully brilliant to the painfully awful. In my experience, most cartoons aimed at girls, let alone little girls, are borderline unwatchable and, off the top of my head, I can count the number of good “girl cartoons” I’ve seen before this show off one hand: Kim Possible, My Life as a Teenage Robot, and the Powerpuff Girls. They’re generally so bogged down with gender stereotypes (AKA being obnoxiously girly) that just watching a few minutes of them will probably give you a hernia if you’re a guy. This isn’t to say that My Little Pony doesn’t have moments that make you roll your eyes and wretch but, in a move I applaud the writers for, there’s usually a character that steps in and does it before you even get a chance to. It’s a show that rarely insults your intelligence and has a tendency to surprise its adult fans with subtle references to pop culture like Star Wars and even the Big Lebowski. It’s fun, funny, and even educational. All in all, it’s a well put together show that deserves the fanbase that it has but you’re probably wondering what it’s about anyways.
My Little Pony is set in the land of Equestria, a land inhabited by three species of talking, pastel colored ponies: earth ponies, pegasuses, and unicorns. The episodes revolve around a purple unicorn named Twilight Sparkle who moves to a town called Ponyville to learns lessons about friendship with the help of her friends (yes, it’s extremely girly and when I first heard the premise I smirked too but stay with me). As said, Twilight and her five friends are the main characters. Twilight is studious and clever but is easily stressed out thanks to being a perfectionist and being slightly OCD. Applejack is an orange earth pony who works on her family’s apple orchard “Sweet Apple Acres.” She has a thick southern accent, is very hard working, and considered to be one of the most reliable and trustworthy ponies in Ponyville. Despite this, she has a very hard time asking for help or admitting she’s wrong and she’s sometimes a little too “dingle-dingle-durr” (If you know what I mean) for her own good. Rainbow Dash is a blue pegasus with a rainbow colored mane and the tomboy of the group. She’s highly competitive and confident but this has the tendency to get the best of her when she overdoes it, turning her into an unapologetic loud mouth and sore loser. Rarity is a white unicorn who is a fashionista that runs her own clothing store (the Carousel Boutique) where she designs clothes. She’s generous, proper, and creative but a drama queen in every sense of the word, sometimes being hoity toity when trying to stand out and becoming outright neurotic if she gets a splash of mud on her. Fluttershy is a yellow pegasus who spends most of her time taking care of animals. She’s kind, soft spoken, and is always thinking of others but, because of this, she’s painfully shy and has a tendency to let people use her as a doormat (sometimes awakening her inner beast). Last is Pinkie Pie, a pink earth pony with hair that strongly resembles cotton candy who loves to throw parties and works at the town’s bakery, Sugar Cube Corner. She’s very friendly and fun loving but also extremely hyperactive, talkative, and nosy which tends to get under the skin of anyone who isn’t as manic as she is if they’re around her for too long. As you may have guessed from the title of the essay, this is the pony I wanted to focus on the most.
Pinkie is a favorite among the fans for a number of reasons. She’s random and crazy, regularly bending the laws of time and space to her will by pulling random objects out of nowhere from cannons to her pet baby alligator, running at supersonic speeds, eating things larger than herself in one bite, and suddenly appearing in places with little or no explanation. Unlike the rest of the cast, she often breaks the fourth wall reminiscent of the old Looney Tunes shorts. She always carries a song in her heart, letting them out in some of the show’s best musical numbers. She sometimes overbearing and annoying but it’s clear that she means well. She wants to be friends with everybody (even if they don’t want to in return) and her simple philosophy to life is to make people smile and laugh. The thing that strikes me the most about Pinkie’s personality and approach to life is that these don’t come from a little girl (or filly, as it were), they come from an adult. She’s unabashed about how she would hug the entire world if she could and it’s hard to not find her childlike cheeriness charming. She’s blissfully naïve but, at the same time, I kind of envy her for it if only because I feel she represents a side that most of us let go of much too easily.
I feel that adults constantly limit themselves when it comes to fun. Going off cultural standards, the only socially acceptable forms of fun for adults that stand out are sports, alcohol, and sex. Sports and exercise have a tendency to beat you up or turn into chores after a while. As I’ve gotten older alcohol has become less about having fun and more about finding a short term escape from my problems and trying to relieve stress. It becomes less about “hey this will be fun” and more “ugh… I totally need this…” It’s like getting a bad massage; you might feel like crap once it’s all over but when you’re getting worked over by Johnny Vicegrip or Johnny Walker it feels alright and it takes your mind off things. Sex is the final frontier when it comes to fun for adults but most people lack the boldness, imagination, and curiosity to take advantage of it, making it an awkward chore for when birthdays and nights where there isn’t anything good on TV roll around. All this being said, adults are generally pretty boring people. We let go of things we genuinely enjoy in an effort to appear more mature and “adult”, an act that can be juxtaposed with envying the dead. When you’re a kid you constantly think about wanting to grow up so you can have more freedom to do what you want but when we become adults we hardly do anything with the newfound freedoms we get. Adults live within limits, kids live to push theirs’.
I feel that adults too often get bogged down by their responsibilities. As we approach the end of high school or college we’re warned about the “Real World” as if it’s a cruel mistress that rides our bare back with sharpened stilettos and sandpaper panties. “These are the best years of your life,” they tell us. “Don’t waste them.” The grand irony, of course, being that all throughout these years we’re told to abandon most of things that make them the best years of our lives in effort to “grow up” and “become mature.” A lot of things kind of lose their souls in the process, turning favorite activities into chores, and all the while society nods its head as if this is the way things have to be. It’s really no wonder why so many adults are miserable and envy people younger than them. It’s still possible to have fun and laugh even if you now have bills to pay, mouths to feed, meetings to attend, and a home to maintain but a lot of people don’t think so. Happiness is seen as a weekend trip, not a state of mind, and a lot of people deprive themselves of it for the sake of keeping up appearances.
People like Pinkie Pie are among my favorite kind of people in the world. These are the kinds of people who start conversations with complete strangers in line at the grocery store, whose laughs are infectious and seem to light up a room, and who always seem to be in the best of spirits even in the worst of times. It’s argued that the people who try the hardest to make other people happy are the ones that hurt the most on the inside and I think that’s true but not for the reasons most people would give. I would say that it’s because the world is often cruel to them, calling them “immature”, “idealistic”, and “deluded” for pursuing the things that most of us don’t have the courage to and not staying in social norms most of us we wish we could break out of. The world often treats these people as deviants because when they’re told to quietly stand in line they want to play leapfrog instead. Despite their inner pain, they continue to smile because, as Pinkie Pie would say, “it fills her heart with sunshine all the while” just to make other people happy and have fun while doing it.
I think one of the saddest things to witness is seeing people who start off like Pinkie and eventually collapse under the rockslide of personal criticisms, responsibilities, and tragedies. Walt Disney is one of the best known examples of this. He started off as an idealistic man whose goal in life was to bring his boyhood fantasies to life and capture the joys and wonders of childhood not only on film but in several “magic kingdoms” across the United States. The man who set off to make “the happiest places on Earth” eventually became one of the most miserable men on Earth under all the stress and pressure that came with the pursuit. Shortly before the complete circulatory collapse caused by his carton a day habit that took his life, he was asked what he believed his greatest accomplishment was with the Disney Empire. He turned to the interviewer, his eyes cold and lifeless, and said with a deadpan expression “I’m just happy I was able to keep the whole damn thing together”, and probably proceeded to put out a cigarette on the interviewer’s cheek before giving him a swift kick in the pants, leaving him to sit alone in a dark executive office. Walt Disney died a bitter man, virtually friendless and largely unhappy with life despite becoming an American legend within his own lifetime whose creations still delight and inspire young and old around the world.
Those that are able to brush off the criticisms, adapt to the responsibilities, and overcome the tragedies while still being able to smile and laugh are the ones I believe should be revered the most. These are the Dalis, Mozarts, and Hensons of the world. These are the people who delight people with their quirkiness and creativity without really even trying. They simply want to be happy so they can make other people too and this, in turn, makes people around them feel the same way. These are the weirdos who baffle and annoy us with their silly grins and even sillier antics but, at the end of the day, we still find something irresistible about them. Their imaginations inspire us and help bring out our inner child. These are the people who make us laugh the loudest during their lives and cry the longest at their funerals. If you want one of the best examples of this, watch Jim Henson’s funeral on Youtube sometime. If Big Bird singing “It’s Not Easy Being Green”, Frank Oz suddenly breaking down in tears during the eulogy, and his coworkers coming on stage at the end and singing “Just One Person” to a teary eyed standing ovation of over a thousand people doesn’t move you, not much probably will. A vast majority of people never met him but they still feel touched by the man he was and the life he lived. These are the people who seem to magically create joy, happiness, and laughter in a world filled with sorrow, heartbreak, and ennui. These are the people who remember to “smile, smile, smile” even when the rest of us willingly forget. These are the people who are the liberators of our inner child, not tormentors who remind us of good days gone by. These are the people who we ought to strive to be, not to publically shame. Just as they wish to embrace the entire world in their arms, we should embrace them with open arms.
It’s amazing what you can learn from something as nonsensical as a talking, pink pony, isn’t it? Perhaps that’s the entire point though. Perhaps the point is that while there are those that wish to snuff out our sense of fun and wonder there are those that fight without making as much as a fist for us to keep them always, no matter our age and no matter the hardships life throws at us. Perhaps toys, cartoons, and video games aren’t as trivial as we often think them to be. Perhaps fun and wonder are not meant to be locked in the toy box when we grow up but to be carried with us every day of our lives. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter what makes you happy and what you have fun doing as long as you can share these feelings with others and help them feel the same. Perhaps this is why My Little Pony’s fanbase has gotten as big as it has, because it carries these simple messages that are relatable to all ages and cultures. This all being said, there’s nothing wrong with growing old as long as you actively try to retain the joys of your youth as time marches on. You might be accused of being a child along the way while others look on with scowls of disapproval and disbelief on their faces but perhaps this is one of the best compliments an adult can be given. As the old proverb says, “turn your face towards the sun and the shadows will always fall behind you” and, like Pinkie Pie, never forget to laugh and smile.
Fatmanonice, July 24th, 2012
“The most sophisticated people I know - inside they are all children.” –Jim Henson
“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”- Roald Dahl
“Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.” Theodore Giesel (Dr. Seuss)
