Tell me a story

Remember when every story started with Once upon a time...
There was usually a beautiful princess that had been stripped of her position and forced to stay in a tower or scrub and serve greedy step-mothers.  There was a prince that had everything but always bored and dissatified with his shallow life and had nothing that gave it real meaning.  They would go about their separate lives day to day hoping for something better but not doing a whole lot else except what they would normally do.  They would continue to scrub floors or gaze out on a kingdom from a throne.
It was a good thing they had some creative story writers to get these well meaning but purposeless (albeit beautiful) people into motion.  There would be a jealous woman that wanted to make sure the princess never got her position back.  Her deeds would force the story to take a different path which was more interesting and conjure fire breathing dragons and crumbling castles which held keys to solving the riddles of happiness.  It would force the prince off his throne and take the princess from her clean floors and force them both into a different action.  Then after all was conquered, the jealous woman gone, and the dragons and castles now transformed into a shiny and sparkling piece of real estate the prince and princess would be forever united and race toward their Happily ever after...
I wonder sometimes if people don't realize they are their own storytellers for their own lives.  What if the beautiful people didn't wait around for others' deeds to force them into taking action but made their own choices?  What is the princess said she wasn't going to scrub any more floors at home?  What if she initiated that action?  What if she went out and took a position in a hotel instead?  She might have to work for it but she would be opening the door to other opportunities and wouldn't be held hostage to the greedy step-mother.  She might be able to own that hotel one day.  What if the prince stopped waiting for someone to entertain him but thought about what he could do with his many resources?  His first attempts might still bore him but there would be a greater chance it would lead him to something that would finally get his interest if he made the effort.
They would be making their own choices and feeling better about themselves in the process.  Then I bet that prince would meet a princess when he was stopping out at a local hotel which might just lead to a more realistic ending... 
I sometimes wonder how much conjuring we could do for themselves if we only tried to make our own stories more interesting for ourselves instead of waiting for a fantasy to unfold.   
TT