Happily Ever After

INTRODUCTION

             Happily ever after is a place I’ve never been. I’ve seen a lot, and yes, I have been a lot of places, some frighteningly mundane, some amusingly bizarre, yet I haven’t been there. But, of course, I have been “there” a few times; I meant that I’ve never been to happily ever after.

I wonder, as do many others, probably, if this place even exists. You’ll hear in a lot of stories, the phrase, “…and they lived happily ever after.” So I guess it’s just a state. I’ve never seen it on a map, so it’s more than likely a state of mind.

That could get rather dangerous.

“Well, ‘Danger’ is my middle name!” you say. Okay, then, read on; you have been warned. Just don’t go blaming it on me when you go blow away a number of innocent people at a K-Mart blue light special.

Since I’ve got artistic license here, I’m going to venture to guess that a good many people out there don’t give a damn whether or not happily ever after exists. Okay, that’s fine with me. I, however, am on a quest for a much nicer place to be. We all see things differently; no two people’s realities are the same, so I’m allowed!

Now, if you bought this book and came to the conclusion that is has no redeeming value, or that it’s not for you, or that you really didn’t expect a book with this cover art to be such garbage, don’t feel so bad, it can be used for some other things! For example: [1] the paper could be used as kindling, [2] if you forgot to pick up toilet tissue, this can be a good substitute, and [3] this book, together with about a few hundred copies of your daily newspaper, could pull in about a buck at your friendly neighborhood recycling plant.

Or you could just throw it away. It’s mostly bio-degradable, but I don’t think Greenpeace would enjoy tromping over multitudinous copies of my book in order to get to their little rubber rafts. Who knows, they may sprain an ankle, or, even worse, pick ’em all up, recycle ’em, and thus create even more money for themselves.

Excuse me, almost got stuck in a loop. Actually, this is all about love, beauty, and happiness. Oh, and achieving happily ever after. (If any of you are actually there right now, please drop me a line.) Sometimes, it may not seem that way at all. So…

During the times it seems like love, beauty, and happiness are nowhere in sight here in this book, twist it, turn it, bend it, squint your eyes, and read it in a mirror; do whatever you have to do, because love, beauty, and happiness are always close-by. Trust me. (Yeah, you’ve all heard that before, but this isn’t a “check’s in the mail” kind of thing.)

“What in Hell is this?”

Glad you asked. Time to get on with it!

Follow me for the read of your life! This is no roller-coaster ride; it’s a heavy-G, no brakes journey to happily ever after! (If we can find it; it ain’t on the map, at least not the map I have!)

Wish us luck! See you soon! (We hope!)

1
THE MAN

            Hi, I’m Keith Wayne Harrington. You can, however, call me anything you like. Everyone else does. There’s not a whole lot that bothers me anymore. (A complete skeleton of a line of booths, carnival-type, you know what I mean, collapsed on top of my car the other day. I was rather amused, I must say!)

Well, I’m your guide on this journey. Hopefully, we’ll find happily ever after. If not, at least you may possibly gain some new insights on life. Or, at the very least, you’ll learn how not to bring up your children through that very crucial development stage.

Okay, let me tell you a bit about myself. I’m 23 years old at this point in time, in this certain physical manifestation. I’ve actually been around for a long, long time, so I’m a qualified as the next guy for expressing myself. It’s a psyche thing; you may or may not understand.

I’ve got brown hair, green eyes, weigh around 160 pounds at about 5’11” tall. Those are the stats, probably the most irrelevant pieces of information about any human being. What I look like doesn’t really make any difference whatsoever, it’s what’s inside that counts.

“Oh, that’s so cliché!”

Shut up! I like the disembodied voice approach. You’ll probably see a lot of that throughout. I’ve got a good deal of those little disembodied voices running riot in my head. That’s mostly what’s to be found in quotes. If it’s dialogue, you’ll know, because I’ll denote the ownership of the quote. If there’s no claim on a certain quote, it’s owned by one of those nefarious disembodied voices.

I prefer the personal touch in most everything, thus the first-person format. Also, this way, my other voices can make themselves heard. In this world today, I think we need a little (lot!) more interaction on the personal level. That would fix a lot of things.

“I live in Keith’s body, as is appropriate, since I am his mind. Together, we live in Japan.”

I’m rather open-minded, at least I consider myself so. At times, I wonder what ever drove me to join such as closed-minded organization as the military. Then I look back and realize that my mind didn’t open up until after I’d been in the Navy. So then I come to the conclusion that the military is rather well off in the mentality area, while the real world seems to be an ever-flowing well of prejudice.

Well, let’s move on. You’ll learn more about me later. Just look, you already know me better than many various one-night stands would ever know each other, so consider yourselves lucky, cursed, or whatever. Thing is, I’m not the main story here, I’m merely the vehicle.

2
THE MYTH

            Myth: Happily ever after can only be found in fairy tales; it has no place in this hard world in which we live.

If I can be happy now, why can’t I be happy for the rest of my life? Of course, “why” is an impertinent question in any case. Is there any reason we can’t be happy for the rest of our lives? I think the answer to that question is “no.” It may require a lot of work, as there’s much in us we need to look at, however I think it’s possible. If I can be happy now, I don’t see any reason I can’t be happy for every other moment that will make up my life.

Myth: It always happens, as soon as I’m having a wonderful day, someone comes along and ruins it for me.

There is no one anywhere who can make you feel any way you don’t want to feel. Our feelings are our own; we don’t have to feel the way we think we should feel in any instance.

Feelings are meant to be felt, and our upbringing pretty much determines what specific feeling we’ll feel in a certain situation. Now get this, more often than not, situation-feeling combinations are dictated by society! In some cases, this is good. I’d hope that if someone were to murder me, that they’d feel pretty terrible about it, hopefully long before the fact.

They say a bullet in your head can ruin your whole day; that’s true, but only if you allow it to be.

Fact: Personal allowance is a big part of everything. If you have a certain train of thought that you don’t like, don’t allow it. Whenever it comes to mind, tell it it’s not allowed in your life. Keep telling it every time it shows up. Sooner or later, it’ll give up and you’ll be free of it. It’s worked for me.

 3
THE LEGEND

             “…and they lived happily ever after.” This statement concludes many a children’s story. It leaves happiness and hope, both of which are commodities which are usually hard to find once we find our way to adulthood.

It is in these fairy tales themselves where we first learn of togetherness, working with others, and the benefit of hope.

It seems to me that many people, when they reach adulthood, forget about hope and what it’s all about.

“What is hope, really?”

Very nice of you to ask. Hope is active, not passive. You get what you give. If you say “I hope…” and then sit back and wait for it to happen, more than likely, it won’t happen. However, if you exert some kind of effort, it’s likely you’ll see something come out of the hope.

An analogy: You throw seeds on the ground and hope they will grow. Maybe they will, maybe not. However, if you spend some time to plant them carefully, and care for them, nurture them, they’ll more than likely grow to be beautiful flowers.

“Funny how that works.”

A more extreme picture of the above, more apt in this world, would be to leave out the seeds in the first part. Give nothing, get nothing. What comes around goes around; that’s what it comes down to every time.

Back to the fairy tales, all we know is what it says. Who cares, why analyze it? The story says they lived happily ever after, so they did, by god! And if they did, so can we!

“Let us be on our way, we ain’t gettin’ any younger!”

 PRELUDE
AN EXPLANATION

             Okay, okay, we’re almost ready to begin our trip. I just want to let you know a few things first.

1. Wear clean underwear. It’d be pretty embarrassing if we got into an accident and you got picked up by the ambulance and your undies were dirty. What would the paramedics think?

2. Bring plenty of refreshment. We don’t know how far we have to go, and we don’t know if there are any rest stops with a restaurant on the way.

3. Bring extra money. Just in case, maybe there’s a souvenir shop.

4. Fasten your seatbelts. Since this is a journey of the mind, it may have a lot of twists and turns at really unusual times. It’s not going to be noticeably linear, please bear with me. I’ll try to keep some kind of order.

5. Better use the bathroom before we go! I think that’s self-explanatory.

 4