Careful, the white knight might be a frog!
The White Knight is a fictional character in Lewis Carroll's book "Through the Looking-Glass". As imagined in John Tenniel's illustrations for the Alice stories, The White Knight has echoes of John Millais's Sir Isumbras at the Ford in which an armor clad knight saves the day for two peasant children. Literally, sweeping them off their feet onto the back of his horse, The knight carries the children and their heavy burdens across the ford, all is saved. In much the same way, The White Knight in Carroll's book saves Alice from his opponent, the Red Knight. The White Knight comes to the rescue. The reality of this imagery is unsure. However, it owes much to the work of Victorian writers who captured the ideal of the chivalrous knight, the "knight in shining armour".
A popular phrase heard in the modern dating and romance scene is, "You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your handsome prince." It is used to encourage those who still seek true love. However, the underlying concept is that a frog is someone who is not a good match in a relationship. In Aesop's Fables, the darker and uglier facets of life are revealed, in the form of a frog to a young women. A frog does not help you grow to your full potential.
Neither senerio, kissing frogs nor waiting on the White Knight is good. However, if we are longing and waiting for The White Knight to come and sweep us off our feet the question of "why" must be asked. The implication is that we are not taking responsibility for our emotions, life and success. It becomes a habit of letting others define who we are as a person. When we become emotionally dependent on others we do not affirm our authentic selves.
In order to take responsibility for our emotions we must first acknowledge them and allow our selves to feel each emotion. We must not project our past wounds onto others in an attempt to find emotional reassurance within ourselves. Whether it is a good day or a bad day we must take responsibility for how we feel and take care of ourselves by acknowledging negative and positive feelings when they surface, knowing that we are in complete control of how we decide to react in any situation.
We experience emotional independence when we take responsibility for our own feelings and are able to nurture and love ourselves. We can achieve this when we stop allowing our feelings to overwhelm us, learn how to look at them objectively for what they are and start to recognize and listen to our own intuition. We are not governed by our feelings. Our feelings guide us, but we are not led around by them. We recognize our positive feelings of love, peace and joy are letting us know that we are taking loving care of ourselves, and that our negative feelings of anger, fear, hurt, anxiety, depression, guilt, shame and so on are letting us know that we are abandoning ourselves. Our emotions are our perception of stressors. They are not always based in fact or truth. Yes, our emotions can even lie to us.
Many people, men and women, fall into the problem of "needing" someone else to make them feel happy. This behavior plays out in many ways, continuous text messages, phone calls, crisis after crisis, a demand for nurturing and comfort from others. We struggle to take emotional responsibility for ourselves. Many are conditioned to believe that happiness, self- worth, and self confidence has to come from outside ourselves.
Therefore, when we are longing and waiting for The White Knight to come and sweep us off our feet, we fail to recognize the "frog-like" traits of The White Knight. Just because the The White Knight saves us from our selves does not mean that a perfect match has been made. Be careful, the The White Knight might be a frog.
