There’s no happily ever after.
Mainly because there’s no ever after. The story just keeps going. There are happily’s and unhappily’s, and they just rotate.
Loving someone, deeply, truly, doesn’t make the happiness stay.
Happiness, and indeed having anything we want, doesn’t work that way.
That’s why we talk about love with detachment. Loving the whole – the good, the bad, the mediocre, the decently annoying.
Or perhaps just accepting it. Because it will be there anyway. And appreciating the wonder of it all still.
You can still choose what is right for you. They will choose what is right for them. And there will be good moments and bad ones.
We can grow through all of it.
Sleepless Nights and Stars
When my son was little, he couldn’t sleep most nights. He was on a 25-hour schedule, at best, and despite reading all the sleep books in the universe, I could not get his little brain to cooperate.
At first I resisted; I complained; I raged against my 2-4 hour chunks of blessed unconsciousness.
What helped was accepting. That his brain couldn’t sleep, and there wasn’t much for it. Just get up, and go on living.
I could look at the bright side – at least I got 2 hours, and that is better than none! Or if I had none, then at least I had been up, and that is better than having to wake up after 2 hours sleep! At least I don’t have to drive to work in the morning!
I could look at the historical – humans have been waking to tend the fire at night for hundreds of thousands of years. Maybe I just accidentally produced a nightwatchman.
I could look at the science – there’s a strong argument for a genetic component to fixed night owls.
Or I could just stay present enough to sit with the beauty of it – make a cup of tea, open a window, and look at the stars.
Hard times are harder if you want so badly for it to be something else that you hate what you’ve got.
And sometimes seeing the good just means turning the situation over, and sitting with it long enough, to see the gleam of beauty shimmering in the rough.
On Lasting Love and Satisfaction
Maybe the point here is that love, happiness, satisfaction – they only last if we can accept the whole of what is and love it anyway.
If it’s tied to getting what you want – more sleep, a clean house, admiration, a million dollars – you’ll never actually be happy, your love will hurt, and your satisfaction will jerk around like a dog on a chain.
Life is always both. The good and the bad. And we have to learn to see and hold them both. And appreciate it anyway.
Our work was never to secure a happily ever after.
Instead, it was to learn to keep walking, keep choosing, and see the beauty anyway.
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