BENGALURU: Every other fairy tale one reads as a child starts with those promising words, “Once upon a time,” and almost all of them inevitably end with the line, “And they lived happily ever after. The End.” The seeds of the idea of a single, forever relationship are planted deep in our psyche from the very first stories we hear, no matter where the accident of birth has placed us – whether it is in a vast urban slum, or a palatial bungalow, or out in the hills in a hut in a tribe far removed from the royalty and the brave and the beautiful that dot the Western fairy tales. Whatever the linguistic heritage one comes into, the stories one hears as a child end largely in that happily ever after...
Is the happily-ever-after a myth? Ask around. You might hear a “every family has its own stories,” or “we have had our share of ups and downs,” or more colourful expressions of the same sentiment. Back where I grew up, a popular saying was something like, “House after house, a different hearth,” hinting that the steps and stones might be different from house to house, but there is just no house without an entrance to it or problems in it. Even the Buddha is said to have asked a grieving parent to get a fistful of mustard from a home that had only experienced this happily ever after and the Buddha would resurrect the dead child, only for them to realise that loss and pain is universal.
Even if we grew on the strictest diet of Disney and other candied sweetness, we know in our hearts that there is no forever in which to be happy together with the love we find. Love itself is not forever, but ebbs and flows, fades in and out, elusive. We love and feel love, sometimes to the fullness of our hearts, brimming over and at other times, we are empty, having nothing to give or receiving nothing, drifting through nights just existing.
Some of us choose to wait and strive to get that love back, sure as the day is bright, that love might wax and wane, but it always is there, like a moon behind monsoon clouds, never quite sure whether it is waxing or waning. It might be true, but it could just as well be fruitless – like the parrot that waits for the silk-cotton pod to ripen, only to have it burst and fly away.
When the flames of the love we held begin to flicker and fade, it is never quite easy to tell what we should do. Should we try and resuscitate it and get the flames roaring again? Or let it die? Do we hold on to this one love forever, or can we let the idea of love cycle through our lives, to fade in and out? Should we make this one love last forever happily or not, or can we trust we will find happiness with or without it?
(The writer is a counsellor with Innersight)