I want my daughter to be enchanted.
The word enchanted stems from a Latin word which means both “to sing into” and “to cast a magic spell upon.” To be enchanted is to feel taken away from the world, to be carried away into a realm devoid of worry, to calmly fade into the rhythm of a different reality.
For a father to say he wants his daughter to be enchanted is to say what then? Is it a desire for her to become a passive entity who allows herself to be caught up and carried away?
I want my daughter to be a warrior when it counts. I watch Game of Thrones and I admire the intensity of ten-year-old Lady Mormont, but I don’t want that for my daughter. Lady Mormont’s intensity comes from the world around her: the cold nights on Bear Island; the death of all the elders in her family; the knowledge that her citizen’s lives are in her hands; the need to stand firm against a room full of old soldiers and Lords; and so much more. Lady Mormont is who she is because of the horrors of the world she lives in and the duty she feels as a Mormont.
I don’t know want that for my daughter. I don’t want her to have to fight for her survival and defend the honor of her family at every turn. I don’t want her to have to prepare for a reality where a deadly summer is coming, boiling up from the south with a faceless horde in its vanguard.
Instead, I want her to be enchanted by the possibilities of all those living people, all those intelligences and wisdoms singing of the possibility of a better world, both for themselves and for her, enriching her understanding of her place in the world and sharing with her the need and desire to seek humane and peaceful solutions to life’s individual conflicts and the globe’s existential crises.
I want her to be enchanted by the songs of what’s possible.
But I also want her to be a warrior. To know how to escape when possible and defend herself when necessary. I want her to have a fierceness that strikes the heart, and a laugh that strikes there as well, and I want her to wield them both like a Dancing Master of Braavos.
I also want her to be free from manipulation. To be enchanted is not the same as to enchant. We distrust the witch who would put us under her spell, despise the siren who would sing us into our grave, and fear the goddess who would love us in her chains.
The danger of enchantment, of being under a spell, of being carried away by a song, lies in the distance of the disconnect. The more we become enchanted, the more we risk being made the fool.
I want my daughter to be enchanted, but I don’t want her to be made a fool. Tom Robbins and Shakespeare are right: there is great wisdom to be found in the life of the fool; but it’s a wisdom I’d rather my daughter receive from counsel, not from experience. The life of the fool comes with wisdom, but it also comes with the ugliness of our primate culture: the throwing of shit, the rigorously enforced power dynamic, the constant threat of casual physical violence. I don’t want my daughter to be made a fool.
I want her to know wonder, and to value the amazing things she can dream, and to pursue them the way Daenerys Stormborn pursues her destiny, with confidence and humility and a desire to do the most good.
I want my daughter to let her hope for a better future carry her away. I want her to be enchanted by what she imagines is possible.