mulberryshoots

I remember reading fairy tales to my kids when they were growing up. You know, the ones by Grimm Brothers about the glass mountain that the knights rode up on their steeds to rescue the princess from the dragon. Or the search for the three golden apples, one after another in order to win the hand of the princess. Each quest seemed to be more impossible than the one that had come before. Often, heroes and heroines prevailed against all odds and the story closed with a happy ending.

For many of these stories, a lad full of innocence and pluck would win the day and the princess’s hand in marriage. These stories have imbued us from an early age with the notion that hard work, luck and a sense of destiny results in the possibility of happy endings, (similar to the ‘american dream.’)Through incredible hardship, those with their hearts in the right place get their due. Many of us still hope for that in the back of our minds when we watch movies and read novels.

What about real life? It’s a little more complex isn’t it? Relationships that we worked so hard to preserve faltered in spite of our best efforts. Accidents of nature occurred and things happened out of our control: like the collapse of a world economy brought about by decades of credit abuse, individually and institutionally, fueled by expectations or desires for happy endings, even if only on a temporary basis.

My life hasn’t been all that happy although I have survived intact and made my way on my own. I have been thinking about happy endings lately because I wonder what that means. I hovered around it when I was thinking about one wish to place before the Daruma Doll. I looked at the other side of it when I decided to do something about free-floating fear.

Today, I am asking myself what happy endings mean to me. I don’t think I know yet what the answer might be. What I do know for myself is that I believe the quality of our daily lives consists of what we enact for ourselves: the piece of toast to go with scrambled eggs, a cup of fragrant, really hot coffee nearby. Reading the paper even when I may not like what I’m reading about. Having a day to myself to do something I enjoy, cook or just goof off and do nothing. Seeing a movie that’s entertaining and fun. These are the little pieces that I can do myself.

I can figure out how to get up the glass mountain again some other day. What about you?