Merlyn's Musings~: The Goldilocks Syndrome

So, this little girl peeps in the windows, checks the locks, sees that no one is home, and sneeks into this house. While the owners are out, she eats out of their fridge, lounges on the furniture, breaks a chair, jumps on the beds and crawls in and goes to sleep in one of the comfiest beds.

When the owners come home, they realize that they have been vandalized. Not cool. They follow a trail of evidence around their neat little abode, and are drawn throughout the home with the signs of destruction. They find the intruder.
It is a small dirty girl, who is asleep in one of their beds.

Did I mention that the owners of the house were BEARS?

OK, so they are vegetarian bears, but still.

Would you want your own child to do such a thing? Probably not. We feel empathy for the bears that even though they were good bears, they got taken advantage of. They could've been mean and devoured the little juvenile delinquent (and in the original story, taken the intruder to the local Constable for the reform school)...but they didn't. They gave unconditional love. And they scared the bejeesus out of the child by doing so. And they never saw the child again.

Interesting.

Some scholars have said that this is about "The Goldilocks Syndrome:"

Definition: An extreme sense of entitlement. Expectation of Manna falling from heaven without acknowledgment or gratitude. Named for the ungrateful character in Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

It is the way of going through life, wayward, ever searching and always wanting, but never being happy with what you find unless it it "Perfect...or JUST RIGHT...." (as baby bear would say).

That in the searching and finding of the perfect thing for yourself, that the syndrome takes over when we can't stop searching for something perfect in an imperfect world and don't see the perfection in the world you are in, but keep being unsatisfied. Never living in the moment, but always searching....and in doing so....leave a wake or a trail of chaos behind the discoveries.

Was Goldilocks ever happy in the end? We don't know. She ran off to keep searching. But the bears probably just cleaned up the mess that she'd left behind, fixed baby bear's chair, washed their bedding, made some more oatmeal, and learned to lock their doors.

It's a Life Lesson originally intended for youngsters to be more careful in the wide world, a little stranger danger to the children, but it's way more than that as well, for us adults looking at it from the viewpoint of being kind, but also being safe with who you allow entry to your inner space (whether it be residence or heart).

OR

Goldilocks may have also been a homeless person, ate some mushrooms she found in the woods, because she was starving and started tripping on hallucinogens and wandered drunkenly into someones house, as she was exhausted and entered a stranger's house. They probably weren't bears at all, but maybe she was just imagining they were, and when they came home, they freaked her the fuck right out, and she bolted out the window. Being high or drunk, she fell a story out the window and kept running and was never heard from again.

Who knows?

:) It was an interesting night of food too!

There was homebrewed ale (with a hint of honey), wine, meade, bedeviled eggs, biscuits and honey, porridge with all the fixings (fruit, nuts, coconut, honey, brown sugar, milk and almond milk), there was pasta salads, cinnamon rolls, and ice cream cupcakes.

Oatmeal (Porridge) with all the fixings! (bananas, grapes, blueberries, coconut, raisins, cranberries, walnuts, honey, brown sugar, cinnamon, milk, almond milk...)

And there were bears. And a Goldilocks too.

So....just in case the wee little children didn't learn about danger this month...(even though children are not allowed at this Children's Lit Club for Adults :)....
we'll just seek to learn about two magickal and fateful creatures in our mood for Halloween:

Peg Powler and Jenny Greenteeth.