The Big 150: 2, Random - What does your happy ending look like?
Full Prompt: Assuming your life is a story and you’re the author, what does your happy ending look like?
My initial reaction to this question is snarkiness because aren’t all of our lives technically stories that we are the authors of? Don’t we all make choices that guide our lives one way or another and then BAM! you have a story about your life? AKA your life story?
Whatever. Maybe I’m over-complicating a pretty straightforward question, so I’ll get back to the task at hand. If I were the hypothetical author of my hypothetical life story, I’d die happy, in my late 80s, warm in my bed after just throwing a necklace with diamonds and a giant blue stone worth millions of dollars into the ocean never to be seen again… but only after telling one of the most unbelievable first-hand accounts of all time and revealing that I once posed nude, pretending to be a French girl.
Sorry. I just love my Titanic references. I can’t help it.
My happy ending? I haven’t given it much thought.. I mean, besides wanting to live out my days in Cork with an old Irish cottage I’ve restored on acres of land, curled up in my reading nook in my cozy sweater with a book and some knitting needles, a cuppa tea next to me, and a pack of dogs at my feet. Alas, I am just a young, vibrant 33-year-old with many years ahead of me so I’m not allowed to be an old lady yet apparently, which is what everyone in my life keeps telling me. UGH, JUST LET ME BE THE GRANDMA I YEARN TO BE, EVERYONE IN MY LIFE.
I do know that I’ve gotten away from defining happiness externally, which is good. Would it be nice to achieve everything I want to achieve for myself in my career and life? Yes, I would like that very much. Will I be a Grumpelstiltskin if not everything comes to fruition? No, because being a grumpy old curmudgeon doesn’t fit in with the aesthetic my mind has built with my cozy sweaters, numerous dogs, reading nook knitting, and lush, rainy fields. Also, gratitude is great, and I am very fortunate. Sure, there are many people who are better off than me in life, but there are far more who would be delighted to switch places. I try very hard not to lose sight of that perspective.
But Johny, the million dollar question: what about *~LoVe~*.. do you have a partner in your happy ending? Yes, yes, I did. I had a husband. He’s buried on my acres of land in the Irish countryside because I murdered him and started a wildly successful “Always the Husband, Never the Wife” murder podcast…. JUST KIDDING. I may love my true crime content, but I feel pangs of guilt over killing a spider, so committing a murder is out of the question for me. That being said, I will kill a spider if it’s a dangerous one, but the rest of the spiders eat the other bugs, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
So I don’t know. Besides my Irish fantasy happy ending in the Cork countryside, I don’t have a list of things to tick off that I think I need to be happy. I have my health, I have fulfilling relationships in my life, a wonderfully perfect tiny baby dog, glorious hobbies, things about which I am passionate, and lofty, yet achievable goals. I’m happy now, so I just hope my ending reflects a similar contentedness I feel while writing this lil' old post.
Did we learn something today? I don’t know.. maybe you learned that I have a dark sense of humor or a love of true crime, but I think maybe what we all learned is that we shouldn’t wait until the ending to be happy.. maybe we could try and just be happy with what we have right now?
To Irish country dogs and petrified bodies in the bogs,
Johny
ICYMI: The Big 150