I recently read The Land of Stories series by Chris Colfer. My daughter loves these books and, since I’m on a middle grade reading frenzy, I thought I would finally pick them up.
I enjoyed them! Adventures. Humor. Great characters. A world of fairytales.
And this wonderful very un-fairytale-like thought at the end, one I whole-heartedly agree with.
Happily ever after isn’t real.
Happily ever after is a dream fairytales give us…a dream continued in the romance genre, heck it’s a requirement for those books. When the point is reached where everything falls into place. When everything is going to be great from then on.
This is simply not real.
Which is why people read them. Sometimes we like not real. We like the dream come true. We like to live in a place where everything is okay.
The escape is nice. But…
Happiness isn’t something you reach, a platform you climb on top of and relax. It’s what you hold onto when you can wrap a finger around it and try to keep it from slipping away.
But there’s always change, another challenge waiting to twist our feelings, try our strength. Happiness is something we fight for, work towards.
There are no happily ever afters. Only happy in the moment, finding happiness everyday, facing every challenge hoping to get back to the joy. As much as happily ever after sounds like a good thing, the place to be, even if it did exist, life is better with the fight. As much as life can hurt, that only makes the happiness stronger, better when we are able to hold it, for the moment it is ours.
Live for those moments. Strive to reach them, knowing you have to work to keep it. Knowing the work is worth it.
