Do you prefer your stories to end happily ever after?
It used to annoy me to read through 300- to-400+ page novels only to learn that the Main Character’s life had gone belly up.
I wanted happily ever after.
If that’s you, too, cue the music!
Maybe it’s time to reexamine happily ever after.
Happily ever after only happens in fairy tales.
I just finished reading This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel (a book that I didn’t have on my TBR list from a couple of weeks ago).
It’s the story of Rosie (a doctor with a positive attitude) and Penn (her writer husband), their four boys, and then their fifth child-—a boy who really wants to be a girl.
Open-minded Rosie and Penn attempt to allow Poppy to grow into whomever she wants to be.
Unfortunately, society doesn’t play along.
Sure, kids are allowed to believe they can grow up to be anything.
But changing their gender?
That’s often where society draws its line.
Where is the happily ever after in that story?
But if you think about it, how boring would happily ever after be?
Where would we put our energy for striving?
What would we do with ourselves day in and day out?
We’d be so worried about destroying our “ever after” part, that we’d forget we’re also destroying our “happily” part.
It’s not even healthy, is it?
Humans are built for conflict.
There’s that horrible platitude that well-meaning people were always saying to my sister as she navigated living with ovarian cancer: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
I cringed every time I heard it.
To me, it implied that if (when) my sister succumbed to cancer, she was weak.
But, maybe, if I squint past the cringe, ovarian cancer—just one of my sister’s life conflicts—did make her stronger until she died.
Her diagnosis made me stronger, too, as I learned to live with that new ever after.
It changed us both immensely.
Probably, happily ever after shouldn’t be the goal. (Maybe happily for a little while?)
Not in life and not in story.
Change is the catalyst for a life well-lived.
People need change, struggles, conflict of varying degrees.
How do they navigate it?
How do people thrive—and to what extent—under the hot hand of change?
Whether they’re successful (happy) or not, isn’t the point at all.
It’s the fact that they’ve undergone a change that has now altered them and, maybe, showed them a better way forward-ever-after.
Some people are resistant to change because “this is how it always is!”
But change is inevitable and in story it’s absolutely necessary.
It gives meaning to life.
Life isn’t a fairy tale, and unless you’re writing one, don’t succumb to happily ever after.
It’s the change that’s important.
And at the end of your story (fiction or otherwise), hopefully you’re able to see the change that ushered in a life well-lived—rather than a happily ever after.
P.S. This will make some people (me!) happy: Wednesday is National Latte Day!
Enjoy your week,
~ Gail
Onward!
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