A Fairy Tale

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Once upon a time there were people unsatisfied with their lives, who lived under the persecution of those who ran the lands they lived in.  Some made compacts to pool their resources and set out for a land that offered them nothing but the chance to escape from the life they had always known.

They set out to make a new world for themselves.  In the span of 400 years they toiled and struggled to tame the land seeking only space; for they came from lands where every space was taken.  The blending of their cultures brought an exuberance and vitality to a land, rich with the natural resources to support a life of independence.

Along the way they imposed their collective will on the land, and the peoples who had been there when they arrived.  They were filled with the self-righteousness of those who knew they had a destiny before them. As wave after wave of immigrants joined them they merged into a unified people. As long as the immigrants didn’t look too different and as long as they assimilated into the new culture.  They were never fully one group, but where bound together by a shared vision of what could be.

But as with all things, time passed and changes occurred. The people divided into camps and pitted their ideologies against one another as if one set were completely right and the other completely wrong.  They had grown into the nation their forefathers had sought to escape, where those in charge vilified and condemned those who opposed them, or repressed those who were not favored.

Then one day a fairy godfather came. He saw in one camp some were unhappy and asked why they were so?  They explained that for too long the riches of the land had been taken without their permission, and although they were better off than before it was not fair. For there were those who through circumstance of birth, intellect, or good fortune were far better off and this inequity must be fixed for them to be happy.

The fairy godfather agreed with these people and thought about how to cure this ill.  He waved his wand and instantly there was a money tree in the front of every one of their homes.

But this did not solve the problems for some trees were larger than others, and besides said the unhappy, it took effort to climb ever higher in the tree to get the money.

As he pondered and pondered on what he might do to bring cheer to these poor people he visited another camp and there again he found the people unhappy and mad.  As he talked with those mad and unhappy people he discovered that they were concerned with strangers coming into their camp where they would carry off the work that allowed them to survive.

The fairy godfather saw the problem and with a wave of his wand he built a huge wall around the camp.  But again this did not solve the problem for the people in the camp complained they were trapped and could not get out.

And so it went, each time the fairy godfather would wave his wand trying to fix a problem, another problem would appear.  Eventually, even the fairy godfather was unhappy and left the land knowing these people listened to the voices that divided, rather than the voices that united them, and until a common voice could be heard they were condemned to unhappiness.

The end.