The Conscious Cinderella Story

Everyone loves a good underdog story.  Sometimes I think people who don't are unAmerican.  I grew up that way, so of course my thoughts are in line with how I grew up.  We always rooted for the underdog in any game.  When faced with a game situation she didn't know, my mom would specifically ask who was the favorite and root for the other team.  It was a conscious thing.

But what happens when the underdog wins and becomes the favorite?  Then we don't root for them anymore?  If what we wanted happened, then we would have communism amongst sports.  Hmm, this sounds a little unAmerican in itself.

But why are we so obsessed with underdog stories? Is it the idea of sticking it to the man?  Overthrowing the kingdom?  Maybe there is something American in this idea after all.  Deeply American.  The idea of the tired, poor and huddled masses breaking free and winning an unlikely war.

This would mean though, that only Americans like the Cinderella Story.   This is not true, as one of my closest friends is British and roots according to the underdog theory.  The actual Cinderella Story is thought to be German, though it was floating around for a long time before the Brothers Grimm wrote it down.

Maybe there is something so deep in our collective consciousness and traditions that makes this type of story so emotional, so real.  This question has always stumped me, until I went to the Southeast Wise Woman's Herbal Conference, which was seriously life-altering.

Before I left on my eight-hour drive to Asheville, NC, I stopped at the library for a book on CD.  I had 16 hours to kill of listening time, so I wanted a riveting book to keep me going.  I looked around and read the synopses of different stories.  I wanted something uplifting, real-life, and congruent with my current thinking.  I settled on Christopher McDougall's Born to Run.

In a story so compelling, I learned about some anthropology that we had never considered before.  Early humans and Neanderthals were competing species.  Humans were puny and had smaller brains compared to the Neanderthals.  So why did the humans proliferate and the Neanderthals die out?  According to the book, humans were able to run down their prey.  They were interested in fast-moving grazing animals.  Neanderthals wanted the large animals like mastadons.  They were strong enough to take them down.  The Ice Age began to subside and and the Earth warmed up.  It was too warm for mastadons and these large wooly animals, and the Neanderthals were not interested in changing their ways, so they went with them.  Humans adapted to the new environment because they were able to change the animals they hunted.  We beat the Neanderthals even though they were faster, stronger, and smarter than us.  The Cinderella Story was born with our species.

This story has so many implications for our conscious living, and more things to teach us than the story about a girl who magically became a princess because a prince thought she was pretty.  Things I learned:

1.  Being the strongest or smartest is not the always the best.  It may get me far in the short-run, but the long-term world is about adaptability.  (too big to fail...what?)
2.  Being set in my ways is harmful.
3.  Movement and adaptability go hand-in-hand.  It is much easier to change a moving car's direction than a stationary one.
4.  Conscious living is about focusing on long-term success but being happy now.  This is innately human.

Maybe there was a part of King George that knew he couldn't have won this war.  Maybe his innate human was rooting for the underdog.