What Type of a Fairy Tale?

"My life is a fairy tale." says the young man. "It´s not easy, but it is like a fairy tale." he repeats. He has his own business. Its name is Menestystuote, Success Products. He tells to me that he cannot invite recently met girls to visit his home. The luxury they would see there could tempt them to like him more than they otherwise would.

Sometimes you meet people you´ll never forget. I met the above young man years ago on a train from Tampere to Oulu. If I now saw him somewhere I wouldn´t regocnize him any more. Anyway I remember him every time when my own life starts to get somehow strange.

It is quite interesting to think when exactly that going-strange happens. When life somehow gets out of phase we know it automatically. Something points it out. We have specific indicators that identify deviations from the normal state of affairs. My personal deviation indicators talk. They use the young man´s sentence: "My life is like a fairy tale. It´s not easy, but it is like fairy tale." When I hear that in my head I start looking back at what has happened lately.

In the morning I had a business appointment in town. The weather was sunny and warm. It´s only about three kilometres to the city centre. I chose the luxury way of travel and decided to cycle there. Never have I arrived so totally soaked and wet at a business meeting as today.

Having come back home I had to prepare marketing material and collect the addresses of this special target group. Now I understand why the person looked so happy when I promised to do that. If one of the addresses doesn´t work, you don´t know which one it is and the message never leaves your own computer. Little by little your eyes and neck start to protest for looking for the error.

We have a Finnish fairy tale called The Birch and the star: A war has been destroying the country. Children have been sent abroad to live there. Everything in the new country is nice and peaceful, but the boy and the girl miss home. They want to go back. They walk and walk and walk. One day they come to a small humble cottage. They see a birch growing at the gate and they see a star in the foliage of the birch. This sight, the birch and the star, is all they remember of their former home. Now they know that they have arrived back home. They know they will feel happy here. They need not search for anything more. - If you mention The birch and the star, all Finns know what you are referring to.

Dogs´meaning making system seems to work in the same way as ours does. Both of us can make things insignificant by just ignoring them. My dog Uffe streched this quite to the extreme. Moving cars were in no way important to him. He had decided to ignore them and might have lost his life because of that decision. Moving cars had no meaning, but cars standing still were worth paying attention to, because they could be used as a means of transport and tourism.

While walking down the hill to meet a neighbour of mine I met another neighbour. We spent some time talking about Uffe and the evanescence of life. Her dog was the only one that Uffe considered important enough to pay attention to. Uffe insisted on being the king of the quarter and so did her dog too. I think that they just showed mutual respect by heavily barking at each other a couple of times every time one or the other passed the other one´s house. Obviously the message was: "I bark at you, because you exist. If I did not bark at you, you would not exist in my world. I prefer that you exist."

What made my life look like a fairy tale today? Something in the above events? All feelings are triggered by something special. Today´s trigger event was embedded in the business meeting.

Now I have a very interesting project to manage for a pay that has no reasonable relation to the amount of work already done for its success. For such a low pay, it had better turn out to be a long-term investment. Anyway, it is one of my long-term professional dreams come true. Shimmering stars are becoming beams of light. Instead of individual impact training we´ll now have processes. They are initiated by the client organizations, but controlled by those people who really do the work. And you know how empowering that is. Long live Internet!

The young man on the train had a successful and profitable business. "Are you now more serious with your business?" my newly re-found Chinese friend asks. Maybe I should learn not to mix up a way of life and business. Maybe the looking-for-the-birch-and-the-star as a strategy has become outdated and insufficient. Perhaps I had better change over to some other fairy tale to get some luxury items around me. What would you think about Simbad the Seafarer?

"Simbad zarbaba rumbo a islas habitadas por desconocidos de conducta imprecedible y por aves extrañas/... / Lo único predecible de los siete viajes que realizó Simbad fue que, gracias a que entabló comunicatión con otros extraños, ya fuesen humanos, aves o monstruos marinos, el marino se enriqueció y fue cada vez más feliz." (Fatema Mernissi: Un libro para la paz, ISBN: 84-7669-663-9)

If life every now and then reminds you of its fairy tale character, why not choose the type of fairy tale you want to be in. So far, I´m not surrounded by luxury nor haunted by abundant income, which in Finland means that you can invite anybody to visit you. That is the positive in it. But if using the-birch-and-the-star-strategy means that you´ll be haunted by the lack of income, it is certainly more clever to change the fairy tale. Simbad the Seafarer does not sound bad, does it?

What kind of imaginable - and profitable - opportunities can you find in the triangle blue oceans, your expertise and the Internet? Who do you need to co-operate with to make the opportunities become true?