Fairy tales, at least those depicted by Disney, center around the idea of achieving happily ever after!
Cinderella gets to go to the ball and ends up having the prince search her out to marry her...and they live happily ever after.
Aurora is rescued from a fire-breathing dragon and ends up finding true love...and they live happily ever after.
Ariel gets to have the life she wants and ends up being able to find a balance between her two worlds...and they live happily ever after.
Snow White is able to return to the palace and ends up coming to know her true heritage...and they live happily ever after.
Even other stories that Disney chose to illustrate ended up having a similar story arc - Pongo and Percy are reunited with their puppies and quite a few more before living happily ever after, Simba is able to return home, revenge his father and bring balance to the pride lands before living happily ever after, and Lady and Tramp are able to find a way to be together and then live happily ever after.
As a child I grew up watching these movies and came to believe that happily ever after was real and attainable in this life. I came to believe that my life story would go something like this: protagonist (me) grows up, progressing intellectually, physically, and psychologically until one day an antagonist appears that provides a significant and notable challenge that, once overcome, would open the way to smooth sailing. Of course, I thought it would be grounded more in reality than the Disney movies I referred to above, but I really thought that would be the general story.
In the event that you haven't read some of my earlier posts and the reversed expectations I've already talked about, my life hasn't aligned with that ideology. In fact, when it comes to life, the idea of happily ever after, as depicted by Disney, would seem to be the epitome of a reversed expectation.
Life hasn't learned that it could follow the script of a Disney writer.
Life has its ups and downs, and at times it would seem that the downs outweigh the ups. You don't make it on the sports team you had hoped to be a part of, so you turn to art. Your artwork isn't chosen for the exhibition you dreamed of, so you transition to another area of focus. You don't get chosen for your desired promotion, so you move to another team. Your new team ends up being downsized, so you end up looking for new work. The opportunities for challenges and downturns in the path of life are endless. And if you're a religious person, and have faith that doing good will lead to good in the end, sometimes that "good in the end" for you might not be until the next life. As the author Sheri Dew has titled one of her books, "If Life Were Easy It Wouldn't Be Hard". Though there's value and lessons to be learned from the hard times, sometimes those hard times are a little much and we just wish for the happily ever after Disney captured in their movies.
That being said, I would argue that life and happily ever after are able to coexist, their relationship is just a bit more complicated than the fictional relationship captured by Disney.
But since I'm using movies as analogies for life, why stop here? The relationship between life and happily ever after is better depicted by the moves animated by Pixar, where the things hoped for are achieved in a different way than initially thought. Ratatouille is able to cook, but only through an intermediary. Sully and Mike are able to help Monstropolis, but only by tapping into an unexpected source of power. Flik is able to save the ant colony, but through a group of clowns.
I think the movie that best illustrates how this complicated relationship between life and happily ever after work in reality is the movie Onward (if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend not reading the rest of this post and going to watch it as the next few paragraphs will contain some serious spoilers).
The movie takes place in a world where magic used to exist, but it wasn't the easiest to master. As a result, society as a whole progressed towards technology to do things previously only provided by the few people considered proficient in magic. As technological advancement progressed, those choosing the arduous task of mastering magic dwindled until the knowledge of it was lost. This is the world that two elf brothers find themselves as they live with their widowed mother. The younger brother turns 16 and their mom provides the two boys with a gift from their father, a magician's staff and a spell that would bring him back to life for a single day. They then embark on a quest to find a magical stone to fuel the spell. As the movies progresses the younger brother creates a list of what he wants to experience with his father during that single day. But, as regularly happens in life, the movie doesn't quite go as planned and they end up only have a few minutes of time with their dad in the midst of fighting a dragon. The younger brother steps up to take on the fight and sends his older brother to spend time with their father since he realizes that everything he wanted to have with his dad he had experience with his brother, who had filled the father figure in his life all along.
That's what I think happily ever after means in reality, a state only achieved as we shift our perspective to account for the curveballs life throws at us.
Sure you didn't get the promotion you had hoped for, but maybe the experience will prepare you to apply for and then receive an offer of employment for a position that exceeds it. Leading to you achieving the goal of providing for your family at the level you had hoped. Sure you had always dreamed of living a life that would be remembered, but maybe you'll only be remembered in your roles as son, brother, and father, where you have an impact to effect generations.
So though happily ever after may not be in the fashion depicted by Disney, in Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, or Snow White, it is attainable in this life if we just shift the perspectives with which we view the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
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