And Then They Lived

Twenty years ago, stories ending with ‘...and they did not live happily ever after’ used to make me sad. As I saw more life, I learned to embrace the purpose of romantic love with some perspective. Given the complexity of problems in the world, not ending up with a particular person shouldn’t be the end of enthusiasm in any life. A perfectly healthy young person grieving over a lost love story sometimes forgets how they are also capable of educating a child, contributing to creative ideas for a highly technical project, and inventing something new ten years down the road. This is what changed my understanding about why being tunnel-focused is not a healthy experience of love. Love sharpens purpose, sometimes in cozy ways, other times in sharp ways. I like to believe how we misunderstand the entire purpose of meeting people in the first place. People meet to enable change in thought and life movement. It is why any love story that I may ever write would include a slightly different ending, one that the old and the young would be able to live with alike. My endings would say, “And then they lived.”