A significant character in Rumpel’s life, Belle, has been a huge catalyst as she was able to see beyond his darkness and heartless demeanor and was attracted to what she perceived as his good heart underneath. She succeeded in reaching and “deactivating” him with her trust and kindness as Belle was not fearing him and even defied his rules a few times. In season 1, Belle’s love is not enough to help Rumpel bridge over his darkness towards true love;
Belle: You’re a coward, Rumplestiltskin. And no matter how thick you make your skin, that doesn’t change.
Rumplestiltskin: I’m not a coward, dearie. It’s quite simple, really… my power means more to me than you.
Belle: No. No, it doesn’t. You just don’t think I can love you. Now you’ve made your choice. And you’re going to regret it. Forever. And all you have… is an empty heart. And a chipped cup.
The most important thing for Rumpel was his power, asset which he was not willing to exchange for gaining access to his heart, love and Belle’s heart.
Despite his most famous saying that “all magic comes at a price” he still wanted magic at that time and wasn’t willing to trade love for darkness once again.
Mr. Gold: We’re in a Land Without Magic, Belle. And I’m bringing it. Magic… is coming.
Belle: Why?
Mr. Gold: Why? Because magic is power.
Arriving to the archetypal true love and being in devotion to good versus evil is a costly decision for humans as long as we’re on this earth. We need to be vigilant and fight evil daily in a smaller or larger forms. (I’ll explore Snow White, who is on the opposite side of the spectrum.) It can be costly to act this way as love brings up vulnerability and can also bring enormous pain until we know how to manage our hearts.
Some of us arrive at a point of bridging the gap and committing to light/love sooner or later yet it’s a journey we have to undertake and a choice we have to make and keep making.
Once Belle lost her memory and could not remember Mr Gold/ Rumpel, he reached out to her and confessed his impact her love and goodness had on his being:
Mr. Gold: I know that your confused about who you are. Now I’m going to tell you. You are a hero who helped her people. You are a beautiful woman who loved an ugly man. Really, really loved me. You find goodness in others, and, when it’s not there, you create it. You make me want to go back. Back to the best version of me. And that never happened before. So when you look in the mirror and you don’t know who you are, that’s who you are.
This is what true love’s potential is, one of the most powerful impact, to pierce through darkness and light a fire inside someone’s heart in order to make them desire to become the best version of themselves. All the walls down. One of my favorite shares of Mr Gold/ Rumpel is the following:
Gold: Belle, when we met, I wasn’t just unloved and unloving. I was an enemy of love. Love only brought me pain. My walls were up. But you brought them down. You brought me home. You brought life into my life and chased away all the darkness. And I vow to you I will never forget the distance between what I was and what I am. I owe more to you than I can ever say. How you can see the man behind the monster I will never know.
So much truth and vulnerability. When we are unloved there is a void inside of us. And a wall. For protection. Being unloved makes us be unloving, and then darkness slowly has an open door to creep inside our hearts.
Only love and innocence can attempt to bring those very walls down and bring life back to a dry terrain.
We will explore more about why Rumple was unloved and where it all started and how he perpetuated this family inherited void in the next post;
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