Happily Ever After's and Creating Your Own Fairytale

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And they lived happily ever after..


I remember that line being uttered to me on numerous occasions as a child. It'd come straight after a beautiful tale about a princess who was locked in a tower, or held captive by villains, or controlled by an evil stepmother- and it'd always end in her being rescued by her prince. I'd be tucked up in bed ready for sleep, and those words "..and they lived happily ever after" were a source of comfort to me as I began to drift off into my own fairytale.

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Fairytales are a wonderful source of hope and imagination, they offer a source of magic and dazzling romance and add sparkle to our lives; and what I love most about them is that no matter how dark the storyline, there is always a happy ending. Even though fairytales are, well.. tales..they are a beautiful metaphor for reality. Mind you, I'm not saying that you're gonna find yourself ineptly locked away in a tower and pining for Prince Charming to come along on his white stallion and take you back to a faraway land named Duloc to live happy ever after, but if you read the subliminal messages in those stories you will find that they all carry the same message: that even in your darkest hour, things will get better.

But Damsels, we do not have to wait in our towers for a prince to rescue us in order for things to start getting better. We do not have to gaze wistfully out of our castle windows thinking "if only". We do not have to kiss every damn frog in our pond in hope that Mr. Charming will leap up at us and say 'hello'. We can create our own fairytales and 'happily ever after's'.

There's this common theme with the notion of 'happy ever after' - - that our happy ever after will come at the end of our story, just like the fairytales. And whilst that is a nice concept that one day we will be happy and content with our charming prince by our side, it isn't nice for us damsels who want to be happy today!

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We must create our own fairytales!! What's the point in waiting around in a lonely tower in hope that Mr. Prince Charming will come and save us, only to be let-down by our fantasy when we find that behind that helmet and plated armor, our Prince charming is actually a green ogre! --nothing against Shrek of course! -- but what I'm getting at is that we have to stop waiting for that 'one day' and make that day today! Otherwise we are going to continually be left disappointed when our 'one day's' never come, or when they do come but are not as what we expected.

“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.” ― George Harrison

I think Hollywood is a big perpetrator in conceptualizing this 'happy ever after' myth; that life will become problem-free when we meet our Prince, when we defeat that evil villain, when we fit into our tight corset tulle and lace princess dress. But in real life theres always going to be problems, and Happy Ever After depends largely on what we do today. Imagine what those wondeful fairytales would be like if the leading damsel were to take charge of her own life and circumstances as it was thrown at her? Cinderella would have pummelled her evil step-mom with her dust and pan, and Rapunzel would have found her own way out of that tower using her own strength and wisdom instead of waiting for some prince to rescue her. Instead of being fragile and helpless these princesses could have been feisty and powerful, cos there's nothing more beautiful or magical than a girl who knows how to take care of herself! Unlike the fairytales, your happy-ever-after is not restricted to the time that the clock strikes midnight. So I encourage you each to Write your own beautiful fairytale -- and remember that 'happy ever after' belongs at the beginning- not the end- of the story! 

Happily Ever After begins today.