Happy Endings

There’s this feeling when you’re reading a book, or watching a movie, when you know, deep down, there’ll be a happy ending. Maybe it’s the genre – romance always ends with them getting together, doesn’t it? A story of danger and risk must end with things turning out okay, because how else would the person be alive to tell the tale? There are dangerous few pages left in the book, or minutes left in the film, and it seems impossible that everything could be resolved… but they (almost) always are.

Where would we be without that happy ending? Do we have an underlying consolation, as we immerse ourselves in any story, that things will turn out, that “the sun will shine out the clearer”? Should we have that underlying consolation? If terrible things are happening to the beloved characters of a story and you feel okay to put it down for a moment because ‘it’ll all turn out in the end,’ doesn’t that disconnect you from the narrative?

Here’s the thing. Endings aren’t always happy.
Sometimes the end credits roll, and the lovers have gone their separate ways, or there is no cure for the disease, or the main character doesn’t find that answer they were seeking all their life.

So what can we do if our minds are always grasping for that happy ending and we don’t get it? How can we be content with this unmagical conclusion? How can we reconcile the hours we spent reading this book or watching this movie, with an unhappy ending? If escape is all we seek, if a romanticized “happily ever after” is our only goal in consuming a story, well, maybe we can’t reconcile it. Then maybe we have wasted our time.

But what if by reading, or watching film, we were not seeking merely entertainment?
What if it wasn’t about the wedding at the end, but about the falling in love? What if it wasn’t about the miracle cure or the amazing success, but the journey along the way? What if the stories we read are more than just fantasy, some impossible dream that we project onto our own reality, but something of real life? What if by reading and watching these characters live their (maybe broken, maybe burdened, maybe beautiful) lives, we learn something about ourselves, about the world around us?

What if it doesn’t need to be a happy ending?

These happy endings don’t last forever. As quickly as a problem is resolved, everything can change again, and you’re left where you started. Lovers break up. Newly wedded couples begin to fight. A beloved son is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Nothing remains as picture-perfect as it seemed when the last chapter ended, when the screen faded to black.

So perhaps the best endings, then, are the bittersweet ones. Where there is hope for everything to turn out okay, but no promise. No guarantee. Just the small intake of breath, the hint of a smile after tears, eyes meeting across a crowded room.

It’s a little bit like life, then.

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