What Makes a Happily Ever After?
Fairy Tales peak then promptly end.
As an audience, we never get to see what happily ever after looks like, only that the outlook is, well, happy.
Instead, we relish in the fairy-tale promise that one thing, usually love, sweeps in and makes everything better, for good — happiness everlasting.
In the modern Cinderella Story, our girl would suffer through some terrible, dead-end job. The wicked stepmother trope would be replaced by an overbearing manager. Poor Cindy would be underutilized, underpaid, and underappreciated.
Consequently, Cindy would dream of a corner office in the shiny Salesforce building that towers over Indianapolis. In her sorry cubical, she would secretly scroll through job boards, hoping her manager mistakes her escape efforts for noteworthy productivity.
One sunny Wednesday lunch hour, Cindy would swiftly change into the business professional power suit borrowed from her Fairy Godroommate. Minutes later, while exiting her pumpkin orange Uber, Cindy’s heart would flutter: this is her fairytale moment — an exceptional interview, an on-the-spot job offer, and a promising new career, just as the clock strikes noon.
And business professional Cinderella worked happily ever after. The End.
That’s it? Yep, this Fairy Tale is about landing the dream job, not keeping it. Just like the classic Cinderella story, we don’t hear about any of her inevitable struggles; we prefer stories of falling in love, not maintaining love.
In the same vein, why would we linger post job acceptance when to maintain any job is to toil through innumerable frustrations and disappointments? Successes are innumerable as well; however, what kind of Fairy Tale is one that proves HEA (happily ever after) is, in reality, more ordinary than extraordinary?
With no point in glorifying it, maintenance sucks. Maintenance makes us forget how grateful we are for our livelihood or how in love we once were.
Even if we end up with everything we asked for (and never want for more), we’ll also receive plenty we didn’t ask for. Life’s funny like that.
If you’re lucky, all this unwanted stuff will give you perspective, that coveted sense of unwavering gratitude. If you aren’t so lucky, I have a squad of 20-somethings ready to embrace you.
It seems surprising to all my friends how much of our 20’s is spent questioning whether we are living life as we should. With each of my successes lingers the insecurity that I am headed down the wrong path; am I sure this is what I want?
While I’ve never had my own HEA, I became too personal with an ex’s seven-year, massive debt-accumulating, all-consuming HEA: a tenure track professorship. I was there the moment he attained his HEA and there the moment he began to live it.
One of my theories for the ridiculously destructive way we ended (besides being painfully, comically mismatched) was the reality of his HEA. After all the time and tears, his HEA was, as all jobs are, a mixed bag. To live up to his promise that building an obsessive career would ultimately bring him the most fulfillment, he created unnecessary responsibilities, worked crazy long hours. I took him away from that, begged him for more of his time.
Finding a balance was unnecessarily uncomfortable for both of us. I was detracting from the joy of his long-awaited HEA: I had to go.
Watching all that misery go down gave me a healthy suspicion of inflexible HEAs.
This year, a work trip to Mexico put the nail in my HEA coffin, now floating somewhere in the Pacific, given the Viking funeral it deserves.
For the first time, I stood in presence of all my coworkers. Each of them has an impressive career path, not a career destination. No matter their successes, they continue to develop new skills, to redefine what they want from their professional lives. Equipped with years of valuable experience, they have earned the freedom to make leaps of professional faith.
After four days of working with and learning from this group, I decided once and for all that I’m not looking for a professional happily ever after. I won’t be Cindy, walking into the shiny Salesforce tower, sure that everything, from here on out, will be golden.
It seems I have graduated from chasing Fairy Tales to building a life worth living.
Since the inception of my career, I was looking for a position that promised good pay, supportive coworkers, inspiring work, and flexibility. One fated coffee break with my now-boss allowed my closest thing to a HEA fall right into my lap.
When I first got this dream job last May, I was filled with gratitude. The newness alone was exciting enough to keep me blissful for the first few months. However, it was not long before I began teetering between immense gratitude and now what.
The now what was painful because it wasn’t supposed to happen. I was given, conveniently, all I ever asked for, and then some. Why was I not still looking down on you sorry plebs from cloud nine? Well, because:
- I am but the sorriest of plebs.
- Clouds weren’t meant to be sat upon.
- Maintenance is part of life; no HEA will save you from the frustrations that come along with reality.
Ten months into a dream job, it seems life is not about attaining a happily ever after as much as finding a few things you can maintain contently ever after. At the tender age of 13,455,360 minutes, I am still determining what my few things are (although, writing is likely one) (spreadsheets might be two).
In a world of maintenance, there may be no Fairy Tale, no crown, no afternoon tea served on a silver platter. However, we’ll find all the ingredients needed to make projects well-executed satisfying, family time heart-warming, and weekday beers with friends euphoric.
