Gisela’s Passion is a retelling of the Slavic folktale underlying the classic ballet, Giselle. The original tale and the ballet are tragic. However, as I was writing the retelling, giving the story my own interpretation and flare, it was as if a veil was lifted from my eyes, and I could suddenly see clearly another layer to the story underneath.
On the surface, Giselle is a tale about a love triangle where hatred and jealousy corrupt one person in the trio to the detriment of all. Because of the mindset focus I gave to Gisela’s Passion the tragedy actually becomes three-fold.
The Growth Mindset
A growth mindset is expansive. It allows us to open up to possibility, explore our passions, learn what we can from the wider world, and it helps us integrate that knowledge into our own lives. This particular mindset is critical in the process of change. When we live out our lives trapped in the small-mindedness of circumstances and what society tells us we have permission to do, we shrivel up because our hearts, our true selves, demand more than what society dictates.
This is embodied in the character of Gisela, a teenager who wants to dance, but is constrained by the ideas her father has about dancers and social norms regarding what women can traditionally pursue for their lives. Even as she finds her wings through her passion for dance, the people around her with their social expectations and their ideas about circumstances and what is right and proper clip her wings.
She can never break free, no matter how hard she struggles, because Gisela believes the words of those around her more strongly than the truth beating in her heart. She fails to embrace a growth mindset and, this failure is the core of the thought processes she goes through just before committing her tragic final act.
She does not believe she is worthy of going after her dream and she doesn’t see it possible to break out of the shackles society has bound her with. This is the first tragedy in both the original tale and my retelling of it.
The Fearful and Negative Mindsets
It can be hard to break free from social expectation and particularly parental ideas of virtue and ‘what is right’. The right thing for one person is not necessarily so for another.
How different might the world have looked like if a young artist by the name of Adolf Hitler had been accepted into art school in Vienna in 1907?
This entrapment and the risk of turning to darkness is the mindset journey of Hilarion, the first love-interest. Hilarion has loved Gisela for a long time, but when he confesses his feelings, she rejects him and since he could not put himself into her shoes nor take a step back and view that single incident as one small blip in the totality of his life, he instead festers over her rejection. He cannot see what Gisela saw that they were not a good match, and that what he calls love is actually more of an obsession.
Hilarion also takes on the attitude that it is the Universe’s fault that he suffers. He blames Gisela for his situation. Now, although that is part of the truth, it is not the whole truth. Laying the blame on another absolves us of responsibility, and in the end doing so makes us wallow in self-pity and in the idea that the whole world is against us, deliberately putting obstacles in our way to make us fail.
How Darkness Stunts Growth
This approach to life is the exact opposite of what a growth mindset coupled with an understanding of the abundance that is the Law of Attraction offers. Depending on how we view the world, it can either be filled with darkness and evil, or it can be abundant in blessings and filled with opportunity.
Depression, self-pity, hatred, being inconsiderate, greed and so much more lie on Hilarion’s side of the spectrum, while those who break free of the shackles of the mind are able to grow, express themselves freely and live fuller lives filled with success in all quadrants: relationships, career/vocation, health, and time & money freedom.
When we allow ourselves to believe in the darkness, everything we touch turns to dust, and this is what happens to Hilarion. He strives towards a goal, but it is not in alignment with his core values and his true self; additionally, he keeps on festering on failure, turning each failure into a bigger wall to overcome than the last, instead of accepting that failure is an indication that we still have things to learn.
I find the German word verkrampft is a great way of expressing this mindset. It translates to cramped, tense, and uptight, but also has the additional nuance of fixation and the need for control. When you embrace a growth mindset, you let go the tension and release the cramp, you can stop fixating on the one thing and instead expand your mind to embrace the bigger picture. You relinquish control, accepting that you cannot control that which is outside of you, instead focusing your attention on managing yourself, doing what you can do, and leaving the rest up to the whims of a higher power.
Living Outside of the Comfort Zone is Key
A Growth mindset is about living life to the fullest, not existing as a vice-like “cramp” day in and day out.
That brings us to the third character in the love triangle and a very different aspect on growth mindset. Vincent is the crown prince of his country, but he wasn’t born to be that. His older brother died and left Vincent with not only the obligation of taking his title, but also with the expectation of marrying his brother’s fiancé to keep the political aspect as it has been. The weight of these social requirements and familial expectations mirror Gisela’s situation to some extent, but Vincent does something Gisela doesn’t dare to do.
He leaves home to travel the country.
It is easiest to embrace a growth mindset when we step out of the confines of our comfort zone. The drudgery of daily life keeps us trapped like Gisela and Hilarion, depending on where our inner self-talk lies on the positive-negative spectrum. Vincent does the “unthinkable” and breaks free. He leaves.
And doing so gives him the opportunity to explore. He tests out what different kinds of work are like. He experiences his country and lives freely. Rain or shine, he’s actually out there, living. And he learns a lot. While traveling, he takes on the role of a lesser aristocrat, so as not to draw attention, and once he meets Gisela and wants to get to know her better, he pretends to be a commoner working in the employ of the aristocrat. He understands that in the guise of a nobleman, he will never be able to get to know Gisela because his persona will colour what she sees, instead of her getting to know him for who he is.
When We Embrace Our True Selves, Anything is Possible
Vincent expands into the ultimate possibility that the growth mindset can offer us. He explores new roles, tests opportunities and finds out what really suits him. And most importantly, he begins to formulate a dream. Once free of the shackles of expectation, he is finally able to embrace what he wants and become who he could truly be if he embraced his true potential and did what his unique talents make him good at.
Unfortunately for Vincent, Gisela makes a choice based on the misguided reasoning of her negative mindset that cuts Vincent’s budding dream at the knees. However, he remains steadfast in his new experiences and everything he’s learned since leaving home. He clings to the growth mindset even as he is confronted with the first real test of faith and has to come to terms with the decisions of another taken on the spur of the moment without embracing the opportunity and potential he’s come to understand is part of the Universe.
The Backlash of the Status Quo
To me, Vincent represents the ultimate tragedy of this retelling. For what happens when he finally returns home, reintegrating into the status quo? Precisely what happens to so many of us who try to break free of the constraints of our lives to go after a dream, but are unable to truly leave the comfort zone, and remain shackled by our thoughts or are prisoner to the expectations of others.
He gets sucked back into the way things were, losing sight of the lessons he learned and the experiences he had while becoming ever more “verkrampfed” as his life progresses and transforms into a vice-like “cramp” that holds him hostage and turns him down a road to darkness, where he claims to do things for the greater good but has lost sight of the bigger picture and does more harm in his single-minded pursuit of what he thinks he needs to do.
The aftermath of Vincent’s spiral into darkness is detailed in my two-part retelling of the Grimm Brothers’ lesser-known tale, Brother and Sister. The Siblings’ Tale duology shows how Vincent’s actions later in life, which were influenced by his experiences recounted in Gisela’s Passion, spill over into the lives of a host of different people and informs their own reaction to life.
However, the one character who embraces a growth mindset of the purest form is Elisabeth. She is the main character of Aspiring, Part 1 of the Siblings’ Tale, which is recounted from her perspective, and also in Becoming, Part 2 of the Siblings’ Tale, where she begins to undo the harm Vincent caused unwittingly as a result of his tragic return to the status quo instead of remaining in the elevated realm of his growth mindset.
The Growth Mindset & The Good Thinking
We all have the capacity for good and evil within us. When we pursue our dreams with a growth mindset, there will always be good in it for others. But when we descend into the darkness of a life trapped in circumstance and single-mindedly pursue what we believe we are entitled to without care for others, behave in a way that is incongruent with our core values and what we deeply yearn for with heart and soul, then the spill-over of evil is also equally great and we destroy lives instead of building them up.
Knowing that the life you experience is directly guided by the thoughts you nurture, what will you choose?
Contraction or expansion?
Social expectations or what’s right for you?
A “verkrampft” mindset or a “growth mindset”?
