Channel Your Inner Belle

You want adventure in the great wide somewhere—anywhere other than your current quarters.  Belle—well, she’s my favorite, so let’s take a little storybook stroll just for fun and see how our quarantine lives compare to her time in captivity.

            We cannot ignore the physical environment in which she began her time in the castle:  the dungeon!  Belle was not a guest at the Chateau de Chambord, which actually inspired the castle for the movies and is open to visitors (well, maybe not right now).  No, she was in the Beast’s castle—a cursed, dusty, forlorn place.  Do you feel like you too have been taken captive in a dusty, sad place—your home?  Activities you once took for granted are now forbidden.  Your future, like Belle’s is uncertain.  Please don’t take me wrong, I’m not trying to make light of a serious situation, but we can learn from fairytales.  We’ve been held hostage by a beast—COVID 19.  It’s “mean” and “coarse” and “unrefined”.  Also, let’s not fail to mention Belle was separated from her father.  I know many of you have chosen to sacrifice for your aging parents just as Belle did and all in an effort to protect them.

            We’ve seen the comparison, now what can we learn? Oh that Gaston—perhaps he might encourage us to keep our guard up, for COVID-19 is not gone, and there are people out there who seek to take advantage of a situation for their gain (i.e., using Belle’s father to get to her).

            Let’s think about the change in Belle over time and how we too might discover “something there that wasn’t there before.”  The library—my dream!  I’ve heard there are people discovering new hobbies out there and rediscovering old ones.  Belle explored her surroundings in which she was stuck.  She got to know her neighbors, aka the enchanted castle staff.  Have you gotten to know your neighbors during this time?  And most importantly, she began to see life in a new way.  Before she was a captive, she just wanted to get out of town.  At the end of her quarantine, she was loving life and appreciating its beauty through new eyes.  And she learned to love a beast, oh wait, I used the Beast as COVID-19 earlier—bad example now.  Let’s change the beast example to represent the quarantine as a whole, or no maybe life as a whole with all its ins and outs, obstacles and freedoms.  Be like Belle and refocus, not on your captivity, but on the beauty in life which can captivate you.