And They All Lived Happily Ever After

I got a one-star review yesterday for Reverie.  It’s the first time in four lesfic titles I’ve gotten one.  And before I go any further, I just want to say:  I don’t mind.  It’s okay and I’m not upset.  I wrote recently about how I believe that art isn’t static but is an ongoing conversation between artist and audience, and even angry one-star reviews are a part of that conversation.

What I found interesting about the review, and what I wanted to cogitate on more here, was the main reason for the one star rating.  The problem wasn’t the writing, which the reviewer complimented.  Even the story itself seemed to do alright with this reader.  The main problem?

There was no happy ending.

Well, I don’t totally agree with that.  I think the Epilogue does provide a certain kind of happy ending — just maybe not the one that readers were expecting.  And that lack of fulfillment of expectation was exactly the reader’s problem.  To paraphrase, the reviewer said:

You called this a romantic suspense.  It’s neither a romance nor a suspense.  You led me to believe I was going to read one kind of story, but you delivered something else.

I actually hear where the reader is coming from.  I knew that Reverie was going to be a hard book to classify.  It’s romance-y, but it’s not a traditional romance.  It’s suspense-y, but it’s not a traditional suspense.  I chose “romantic suspense” because it was the closest description, but I knew it wasn’t perfect.  And to be honest, I anticipated the kind of pissed-off review that I got, especially after I changed the ending to its final form.

The reader mentioned that if I’d described the book as a “_____ romance,” then she wouldn’t have been so angry.  But I left the word “_____” out because to include it would have been a spoiler.  That was my dilemma — if I used certain *accurate* words within the description, I would also spoil the surprise.

But here’s my question:

What does our collective addiction to a “happily ever after” (HEA) say about us?

A dear friend of mine from college is a successful psychotherapist in Washington state, and recently she asked me to read an essay she had written called “I don’t want a happy life.”  Her argument is not that we should strive to be *unhappy*, but that our society is saturated with the message that we should all be happy and shiny and constantly excreting rainbows and daisies.

Basically:  Society tells us we should all be the smiling, sunset beach walking, football throwing, playing with grandchildren people we see in drug commercials:

And if we aren’t those happy shiny people, then there’s something wrong with us.  We’re clearly doing it wrong.  Because everyone else is doing great.

Just as most Big Pharma drugs have a dark hidden cost, so our relentless pursuit of happiness also has some dangerous side-effects.  Primary among them:  We compare ourselves endlessly to some mythical gold standard of a happy person that is frankly fake and unachievable.  And when we fail to live up to that gold standard, we get down on ourselves.

“What’s wrong with you?” we ask ourselves.  “Everybody else gets out of bed and showers and does their thing with a smile on their face.  Why can’t you be like that?  Why are you still in your pajamas, feeling sad, wanting the world to go away?”

Here’s a shocking notion:  What if getting depressed sometimes isn’t a medical condition?

What if it’s just a part of being human?

More than that:  What if it’s a *necessary* part of being human?

What if the best medicine for our depression isn’t the latest SSRI but a deep self-acceptance that learns to be comfortable with who we are and focuses on healthy coping strategies rather than chemical alteration?

Which leads me to the other dangerous side-effect of an endless pursuit of happiness:

We forget how to be comfortable with our discomfort.

It’s easier to avoid sitting with our own discomfort today than it ever has been before.  There’s always a YouTube video, an Instagram post, a Facebook conversation we can turn to in order to distract ourselves.  But one of the biggest skills I’ve learned in the past calendar year is to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.  To put it another way:  I’ve learned to be okay with not being okay.  And instead of neurotically seeking to change as soon as a bad / sad / blue mood comes up, I’ve been training myself to sit with it.  To let the feelings come up.  To let the mental thunderstorm play out.

Rain won’t kill you.

What I find on the other side of that isn’t precisely what I would call “happiness.”  At least, it’s not the drug commercial brand of happiness that everyone from clothing brands to feminine hygiene products want to sell us.  What I would call it is “peace.”  A truce within myself.  An acceptance of what I feel at any given time.

To me (and here is where I disagree with my psychotherapist friend), that inner truce *is* happiness.  It’s the kind of happiness I believe that I gave to the main characters at the end of Reverie.

Ironically, I think it’s when we *reject* our discomfort, our pain, our strong emotions, etc. that we make ourselves MOST unhappy!  When we refuse to simply be where we are at.  When we think we should be someone other than who we are.  When we think we are inherently broken. — these moments, in my experience, are the most gut-wrenching of all.

So given the choice between a meaningful life and a happy life, I’ll take meaningful.

I think you know as well as I do that none of us are ever going to be the people in the drug commercials.  They are selling us a fantasy world, and I’d like to hope we are all smart enough to know it.

Rather than a relentless pursuit of a happy ending, what if we pursue a life that’s meaningful and authentic?

And back to fiction…

Sometimes when I consume art, I want to sing along with “Walkin’ on Sunshine.”

But other days?  I want to hear the blues.  I want someone to tell me about their struggles and sadness, because art, after all, is a conversation, and when they sing their sadness to me, I sing back about my own.  I sing back, and I find solace in the harmony of being only human, muddling our way through this messy life, trying and failing and trying again.  The blues are every bit as valid a therapy to me as “Walkin’ on Sunshine.”  I need both.  I need them at different times for different reasons.

I know that we sometimes read fiction to escape, and *of course* that’s totally valid.  But can’t we also read fiction to process?  Why does every book labeled “romance” have to end with a Happily Ever After?

Surely there is room for a Meaningful Ever After?