The Maleficent Quote

I'm terribly sorry that this is so late! I ran out of time to finish the blog post this morning, and I forgot all about the blog post by the time I got home. Fortunately, I was reminded before the end of the day. Better late than never, right?

While the three good fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Meriweather, were discussing what to do about Maleficent's threat to kill Princess Aurora, Meriweather complained that they couldn't come up with a plan that Maleficent wouldn't have anticipated, because she, Maleficent, "knows everything." Fauna responded by saying that she didn't.

"Maleficent doesn’t know anything about love, or kindness, or the joy of helping others. You know, sometimes I don’t think she’s really very happy.” – Fauna, Sleeping Beauty

There are at least two good insights we can gain from this, and I probably only have time to share one of them. Luckily, the first one is obvious and you already know all about it: Love, Kindness, and Helping Others brings joy into our lives. Doing good makes you happy. Inversely, "wickedness never was happiness" (Alma 41:10). Since most of us are familiar with these principles, I'll only touch on them lightly, which I already have.

The other insight to be gained from this quote stems from one word of the quote, and it's probably not the one that you're thinking of. The word is "sometimes." "Sometimes I don’t think she’s really very happy.” This implies two things. The first implication is that sometimes Fauna doesn't think Maleficent is happy, and sometimes she does. I doubt that. The other implication is much more logical, and much more in tune with Fauna's nature. The word "sometimes" in this quote implies that Fauna has thought about this before.

Is sometimes difficult to consider the feelings of others. Thinking of others requires a certain amount of sympathy, which we usually reserve for our friends and families. We may care about their feelings, and that's good. But what about others? Many of us meet countless strangers over the course of our lifetimes. Do we really care about them? Do we consider their feelings and want them to be happy? Not often. It's sometimes hard to care about the feelings of others, especially when you hardly know them or don't know them at all.

But Fauna did know Maleficent. She knew she was an evil-doer and an enemy, which made her sympathy for her even more impressive. Jesus said to "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you" (Matthew 5:44), and Fauna did. She considered the feelings of villain of the story, and expressed sympathy for the villain's lack of happiness. Jesus Christ had an attitude like that. The rest of us aren't quite so Christian.

The good news is that we can be. God never gives us a commandment that we can't keep. Loving our enemies is difficult, but not impossible. Fauna could do it, Jesus could do it, and so can we.