What makes a happy ending

I used to love to pick up that thick, red-orange Collected Stories and leaf through it when I got stuck. It was early in the morning, very quiet and still, and I remember being taken with the tone, and the sort of tossed-off mastery of those first sentences:.

My name is Johnny Hake. It has the hallmarks of all the things that I love about Cheever: a kind of humorous premise, a character on the edge of emotional collapse, a world that is superficially stiff but always undercut by a kind of wildness. And more strikingly, his prose just soars through the whole thing hence the urge to speak it aloud, which I have nearly every time I read it.

Still, when I mention the story to others, they rarely know it. A man with a family in the suburbs loses his job at company that manufactures parablendeum, which seems to be kind of color-tinted Saran wrap. He gets fired, decides to go into business on his own, and does a pretty pathetic job of it.

Quickly, things get bleak. He lives in a fictional neighborhood called Shady Hill, an opulent hamlet not unlike like the one in Ossining, New York, where Cheever really lived. One night after a late dinner party, he returns to house of his rich hosts and breaks into it. He flees with all of it into the night.

This one act haunts the narrator for the rest of the story, and very nearly undoes him completely. He becomes totally convinced of his criminality. He starts seeing theft and sin everywhere he goes. He starts to behave like person being eaten alive by guilt. But rather than come apart at the seams, the natural world intervenes.

And once you know how to avoid the pitfalls, you begin to make decisions that can catapult you toward your dreams. However, before I fully commit, I do my homework on the company, brand or business with whom I am about to work with. If feedback is acceptable and the project goes well, I am more apt to return to that business in the future.

One of the simplest ways we can avoid unnecessary headache, frustration, loss of money and stress is to do our homework and not take anything at face value. Not only will it save our bacon in the long run, but any reputable business wants to know we are savvy, reliable partners as well and are willing to do the legwork.

In fact, if it does, you may just have your first and only necessary red flag to avoid working with that person. Either roadblocks stop you or they refine you. Choose the latter. That may sound dramatic, but think about it. Life is testing us to see if indeed we desire badly enough what we think we need in our lives.

A simple habit to master is to create a list of activities that bring you instant happiness. Think small, such as taking a walk with your spouse or dogs. Here are a few activities I have placed on my list:.

As you can see, each one of these items is something that I can dive into without much planning, money or stress. Knowing that genuine happiness springs up from the simplest of moments and activities is a wonderful reminder that we have a choice each day on how happy we wish to be. So keep this journal handy whenever you need a reminder of what brings you joy. Rose-colored glasses are fine as long as you know you have consciously chosen to wear them. However, here are 5 Things to Stop Romanticizing which were shared in a previous post.

For example, when buying a new house. However, on the flip side, if you have found a house that you love but it will need some work, after looking into the logical components — location, neighborhood, opportunity of appreciation and your ability to invest — then put your rose-colored glasses on and get to work.

In fantasy, usually the quest the characters set out upon is accomplished, though sometimes that has its own consequences the hero dies or, like Frodo in LOTR , has been too affected by the events of the story to truly be happy. Anything else is up in the air. How about stories where the enemy is defeated but someone dies tragically Moulin Rouge. Or maybe, as in one of my favorite indie horror film I Am A Ghost , you are left with more questions than answers.

I think happy endings are actually pretty subjective and hard to define. Does everyone but the bad guy win? Do the lovers end up together? Does nobody come away with traumatic experiences? I know, they can get soooo sappy and annoying. Makes you want to tear out your hair. Especially if you see huge plot holes in the story that are just so glaring you wonder why the filmmakers or writers never saw them in the first place. By the way, I got to see a great film that had the best satisfactory ending this evening.

These deaths were both justified and you were glad to see the bad guys get what was coming to them because of the horrible stuff they did. But there was a twist on the surviving party. I like the writer of the movie to let me know the ending they had envisioned for the story instead of leaving it up to me.

I loved the entire movie and book up to that part because the ending was too vague. And I can understand your feelings about vague or open-possibility endings. They can be aggravating, especially for those who like the satisfaction of a full ending where the evil is defeated and the good guys win.

Does that ever change in any way? Like is it still considered romance if, like in Romeo and Juliet, they can only be united in death? Or what if one dies and the other is left with a child or all alone but the villain is still defeated? Does that count as romance?