In the old fairy tales, the hero and heroine find each other after various complications, then marry and live happily ever after.

The movie I saw recently was a fairy tale. Not the old-fashioned kind but the modern kind with modern problems like drugs and abandoned children. The movie ended “right.” Problems were worked out, fathers got off drugs, and children found homes.

We know how often right doesn’t win in stories of drugs and parentless children. Nevertheless, the audience was satisfied when the problems in this movie were solved, even if the solutions bordered on the unrealistic, reminding us of the fairy godmother setting things right in the old fairy tales. But the acting was acceptable and the movie enjoyable. As my mother would say, it left you with a good taste in your mouth.

A cynical age demands realistic stories, not just fairy tales, but fairy tales have their purpose. They keep hope alive. We yearn for good to win in a world where it so often does not.

The old fairy tales were told in the unjust world of another era. Kings often were selfish, even evil. The average man or woman lived in survival mode.

Fairy tales encouraged the imagining of a more just world. The slighted sister with the good heart wins out over the selfish step sisters. Jack kills the evil giant and brings riches to his widowed mother. An orphan boy finds a sword in a stone, pulls it out, and becomes a leader of his people.

Most of us believe that good SHOULD win. A fairy tale keeps alive this deepest belief in good. Stories are told during times of hardship. They keep hope alive until that moment when hardship can be overcome. We need realism, then, to make the victory work.