The Alcoholic and the Pea
by Hans Christian Andersen
(With Slight Adaptations by Rabbi Ben A.)
There was once a prince who was an alanon, and he wanted an alcoholic princess, but then she must be a real alcoholic princess. He travelled right around the world to find one, but there was always something wrong. There were plenty of princesses, but whether they were real alcoholic princesses he had great difficulty in discovering; there was always something which was not quite right about them. So at last he had come home again, and he was very sad because he wanted a real alcoholic princess so badly.
One evening there was a terrible storm; it thundered and lightninged and the rain poured down in torrents; indeed it was a fearful night.
In the middle of the storm somebody knocked at the town gate, and the old King himself sent to open it.
It was a princess who stood outside, but she was in a terrible state from the rain and the storm. The water streamed out of her hair and her clothes; it ran in at the top of her shoes and out at the heel, but she said that she was a real alcoholic princess.
'Well we shall soon see if that is true,' thought the old Queen, who was a real alcoholic Queen, but she said nothing. She went into the bedroom, took all the bed clothes off and laid a pea on the bedstead: then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on top of the pea, and then twenty feather beds on top of the mattresses. This was where the princess was to sleep that night. In the morning they asked her how she slept.
'Oh terribly bad!' said the alcoholic princess. 'I have hardly closed my eyes the whole night! Heaven knows what was in the bed. I seemed to be lying upon some hard thing, and my whole body is black and blue this morning. It is terrible!'
They saw at once that she must be a real alcoholic princess when she had felt the pea through twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. Nobody but a real alcoholic princess could have such a delicate skin.
So the prince took her to be his wife, for now he was sure that he had found a real alcoholic princess.
I invite you all to interpret this parable. Please share.
4 shares:
so at first i was thinking what in the world?!!! but then i thought wow, only an alcoholic would be so self centered and lack so little gratitude and humility as to insult their savior in the way that she had done. she was not grateful for the shelter or the bed only concerned with her comfort - alcoholics are always concerned with their own comfort. so that is what my first inclination was, but that is always apt to change...lol
Hey thanks Ben for the story, it took me a little while to realize what was happening... What I see here is the need for perfection. I don't need things to be fine. I don't want things that are good enough. I need everything to be perfect. And unless it is perfect I cannot see the benefit of any of it. I cannot see how 20 mattresses are helpful, because the only thing I can see right now is the pea.
Great story !
I too have seen the self-centerdness, lack of gratitude and need for perfection.
But then again, maybe the princess was being polite - after all the queen had gone to great lengths to make her unconformtable ?
Maybe also, being an alcoholic, she new what was expected from her in an alcoholic family and so she acted as expected on purpose ?
Maybe my highly dependant, thus complicated brain working here ...
U.P.A.
I assume your joking around with us when you say that maybe she is just being polite, or doing what is expected of her.
In the 12th step we talk about Carrying this message... and practicing it all our affairs...
Now I am not implying that you should chastise family members who are active in their addictions, but that doesn't mean that we need to act like we aren't working a program when we are around them.
Who knows, maybe the queen would have learned something from the princess had she behaved differently. ( or she would have kicked her out of the castle, either way, the princesses side of the street would be clean)
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