Day 56 - Happily Ever After

What does the above line remind you of? Quickly........Fairy Tales, right? That's the line that all Fairy Tales ended with.........And they lived happily ever after. As a child you felt secure when you read the last line and knew that the Prince had found his true love (or the Princess, if you were a girl) after all the trails and tribulations and would now be happy forever. No more bad people around them and no more hardships.

As you grew older though you realised the fallacy in that last line. Happily Ever After? Yeah, right......your troubles have just begun baby. Wait till you get married and have to take care of the house and kids and in-laws and friends and............ah forget it! Those were your thoughts as you read the lines but you also wished that the lines were true. That love leading to marriage could lead to 'happily ever after' as well.

The thought of this blog came up (thanks to my sister) when I posted a quote from Grey's Anatomy on my facebook account - "Why can't I just be the happily ever after person? Why can't I believe in that?". And the truth lies in that statement.......why don't we believe in the 'happily ever after' statement anymore?

The reality lies in the answer to a very simple question. What makes you happy? It may sound like a simple question but the answer to that is anything but simple. Our answer to that question changes constantly like the sifting sands in a desert or the tides on a beach. It varies from a good job to a good salary to love to spiritual well being to different things at different times of our lives. It depends a lot on our expectations of the people around us and of ourselves. Can we possibly curb our expectations and be happy all the time? I don't think so. Anyone who says that he is a happy person is a liar. There will always be some aspect of your life that you wish was better and in that small space you are unhappy.

In a fairy tale the line is supposed to bring an end to all worries. Its a full stop in that story. But in reality the full stop never occurs. Oh..maybe it does when we die but before that our definition of happiness changes constantly.

I think the key is to define 'happiness' in small portions rather than grandeur plans. As we attain those small targets we can get incremental happiness. Revel in that. Find solace in that small happiness and try to spread that happiness around.

Remember ' Happily Ever After' is like the horizon.......its there, you can see it, it seems attainable, you must strive towards it but you may never get to it!