Fairy Tale Endings

Written on 9/28/2010
Typed on 9/30/2010


"Do you believe in fairy tale endings?"


I'm tempted to say "well, it depends on your definition of fairy tale endings..." but that's avoiding the question, so I'll do that later.
Yes, I do believe in fairy tale endings by the standard definition. Maybe that's because I'm a naive teenager. Maybe it's because you're a cynic who got disappointed by life. (Sorry for the bitterness there, but I'm not taking it out).


Obviously, no one will live in total bliss for the rest of their lives, but it certainly is possible to be happy with life (until the sequel gets published, that is- ha). I'm happy with life. I haven't reached the end, yeah, but if beginnings can be happy, why can't middles and ends? Sure, odds are that no one will get all three, but that doesn't mean no one will get one of them.


I don't want to make this only about romance, so I'll give another example. My first 1 1/8 years of high school have been fantastic. Yes, there have been valleys, but that doesn't mean I consider the whole to be rotten. Are you going to let the one rain drop that got away from gravity for a few days and then fell on your face ruin your entire cloudless day? No. That's an exaggeration, but you get the point.


A fairy tale ending doesn't mean "and they rode off into the sunset and were madly, passionately in love for the rest of their lives." People argue. People lose money. People's horses trip halfway through the nice long chord of string instruments before the credits. People die. That doesn't mean their lives were terrible. "Happily ever after" doesn't mean "TOTAL NEVER-ENDING BLISS!!!!" No, it means contentment, hope, and love.


This is going to sound strange, but I think the events preceding the majority of the movie Up constitue a fairy tale ending, even though I was in tears before the 10-minute mark. She died. Yeah? That happens. It was sad. I cried. Her husband whose name I've forgotten cried. 
But their life together was still happy. There's a reason the guy was so miserable. He loved her, she loved him. They were happy. He had a fairy tale "ending."
Where is the end? In Disney movies, it's sometimes before the wedding. In Up, it was at both the beginning and the end of the movie.


What I propose is this: Of course there are fairy tale endings, because there are fairy tale moments. "Today is the beginning of the rest of our lives." Everything is an end. Everything is a beginning. Time placements don't matter, in this case. If I have a single minute, or a single hour of a "my life is awesome" moment, I have had a fairy tale ending.


That is where I leave you. Savor the bacon (because although it'll be gone in less than a minute, it's here right now). That should be a proverb.