No such thing as happy endings...

You know how the story goes. Prince A meets Princess B and they fall in love. Soon afterward, some hideous beast interrupts their budding romance and marriage timeline by appearing and kidnapping Princess B. Prince A swoops in and rescues her, felling said beast with fair words and sharp sword, or magical battle hammer, or whatever. Prince A and Princess B shorten their courtship, realizing that another delay could really crimp their style, and go off to live happily ever after.

But this is real life, not a fairy tale. The boys at Disney don’t tell you about the fact that Prince A has a castle with a leaky roof and bad plumbing. They haven’t told you that Princess B has an abandonment complex and that Prince A has intimacy issues. No-one even wants to talk about Princess B’s mom – or as the Prince sometimes says “The Mother-In-Law” or “Your Mom.” To be fair, they won’t talk about the Prince’s dad and his foibles either. No, the fairy-tale tellers won’t tell you about the servants revolting because their pay was too low, the Prince falling off his horse and breaking an arm, or the Princess falling ill and having to stay in bed for days. In fact, though the Prince and Princess are actually going through a rough spot, and the strain it has put on their rushed marriage is rather great, the fairy tale authors are quite mum now. After all, they have told you already, “They lived happily ever after. The End.”

There’s no such thing as the fairy tale ending. Life, whether it be that of the Prince and his Princess, or it be the solitary peasant, is a daily, sometimes hourly, struggle. Don’t get me wrong, the work can be pleasant as well as vexing, but the fairy tale ending doesn’t let you know anything. Take a look at couples who have been together a long time. Talk to them a bit and see how much pain and trouble they went through. You will also notice with so many of them how little they count the troubles, and how much they value the love and companionship they have. The struggles were but a labor of that love. They don’t live in the fairy tale, but they make their own happy ending daily with the work they do for one another.

The labor only makes the final reward that much sweeter.