This is actually a really hard question to answer, so maybe I should start with why am I asking it of myself.
For those of you who don't already know this my original online ID was Cynical Chick. Yes, I was once one of those Emo kids and I don't think I ever really grew out of it if we're being a hundred percent honest, but some time around the age of 16 or 17 I decided that, or realised that, not sure which, a big part of my identity was being a writer, and so I created the original CharliesWrite blog, got a new email address, changed social media handles and since then I have been CharliesWrite on pretty much everything. Don't remember the moment it came to me, but it is a big part of who I am, despite the fact my dad has regularly got my email address wrong, called me CharlieWrites and emailed someone else random things like photos of flowers I bought my mum. It's fine; it's not like it's a big part of my identity or anything...
Not that long after CharliesWrite became a thing, or I became CharliesWrite, or however you want to think of it really, I wrote Fairies and it was another thing that became a big part of my identity. It's kind of one of those Inside Out 'core memory' things, I guess. Now, maybe the reason it has stayed as such a big thing is because I haven't self-published anything else, but I think the fact that it was this whole other world that came out of my head was something massive, and it was the first thing I ever wrote that I felt truly comfortable letting other people read. Or as close to truly comfortable as I thought I was going to get, and have ever gotten. In some ways, CharliesWrite and Fairies are indivisible, and that's why most of my social media and online presence has me listed as being a 'fairies believer'. I've also used the term 'general cloud head' because I didn't know that I wasn't just a little helium balloon of a personality bobbing around and talking in a high pitch squeak.
On a couple of occasions, I have been asked in earnest if I truly believe in fairies, and it's not a question that has a simple answer, because the truth is I don't know.
Do I believe in fairies that paint rainbows and run the world? No, that was just fun to write.
Do I believe in fairies at the end of my garden? Well, I'm not someone who believes that they are definitely there, but I would be open to the possibility.
Do I believe in fairies at all? I guess what I believe in is the possibility of fairies. I think that's the best way to describe it.
In my teenage, emo era I was definitely someone who was philosophy mad and a staunch believer in science and only the things that we can evidence, but nothing is that black and white, is it? I thought evidence had to be something that could be measured, or seen down a microscope or telescope. I thought the only things that mattered were the tangible and then I did a bit of growing up and I realised that there is more to heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. He meant science, but I think it kind of applies to both. And yes, I realise that quoting Shakespeare makes me seem a bit like a pedantic pr*ck but it's important.
I went to a Jesuit university, and there were a few lecturers that liked to teach badly. Actually, no, there was one. She had this habit of teaching the scientific arguments for things in such an awful way that then the religious (Catholic) arguments seemed to vastly overpower the scientific arguments and it was almost like trying to prove that all scientists were idiots and honestly it just made the religious arguments look even weaker to most of us. But then another lecturer explained St Thomas Aquinas to us, and it was all about how there's always something at the start of the domino trail (not how he phrased it, but some of the language is a bit archaic). If the dominos are things like evolution and the Big Bang, you trace your way back and there is this idea of In the beginning, there was nothing. And that could be the start of the Bible or any religious text, but it could also be the start of a textbook when we talk about the Big Bang, and essentially, something happened, and then the dominoes fell and here we are. Effectively, whatever that something is, that's what Aquinas called God. And honestly, I'm on board with that theory. From minute one, that made a lot of sense to me.
That wasn't even a tangent; essentially, I believe in that, whilst not knowing what to believe in, but feeling pretty comfortable that there was something, that in our darkest moments (or our happiest) we look to something other worldly, and I don't know what that is, but there's nothing to say it isn't fairies. There's nothing to say that whatever that something is that it is an is, and not a was (as in there's nothing to say it still exists) but if leaving the wildflowers to grow for the fairies makes you happy or comfortable, if praying to something or someone is what works, or if feeling we're alone in the universe and nothing matters is your bag, then hey, you do you. Maybe that's not the belief in fairies that people would think I have, but maybe fairies were just a way to understand butterflies, because people couldn't understand something so beautiful without it being magic? I don't know. And unlike that much younger me, I'm actually very comfortable with not knowing, though that's not to say I wouldn't be curious to find out. Come on, it's me after all.
I was about to click save on this, and then realised I needed to add that Ben Folds wrote a song called Philosophy, and it's brilliant, and. the chorus is basically about how [your] philosophy is what keeps you grounded and keeps you going, and it's so true, and whilst I wouldn't say it completely doesn't matter what your philosophy is, because let's face it, there have been some pretty harmful ones, if it helps you without hurting others (and I don't mean just people getting offended because you believe in fairies and they think it's stupid), well, there's really no problem in that, is there?
