Fairy Tale Friday: Happily Ever After & the Easter Bunny

My calendar shows me that today is many things: a full moon, Good Friday, and Passover starts at sundown. It’s the beginning of Easter weekend, with all sorts of yummy candy and baskets and brightly painted eggs. 

I woke up this morning to a yard full of snow. Blech.

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But this afternoon the sky is blue, the sun warm and powerful. Now it’s the frozen water that's clinging desperately to branches, rather than the delicate green leaves. Score one for the blossoms. 

The seasons have officially turned, rogue winter storm or no (Heh. Did two X-Men characters just inadvertently pop into your head like they did mine?).

So today’s Fairy Tale Friday brings us two things: “Happily Ever After,” and the Easter Bunny. Interesting mix? Let’s see where we can go with this…

The phrase “Happily Ever After” is so intrinsically tied to the fairy tale that one would not really exist without the other. Even original fairy tales, with their darker outlook on life, had endings wherein the main characters are rewarded as their conduct deserves. The wolf may have eaten Little Red Riding Hood in the end, but duh, she shouldn’t have talked to a stranger.

Granted, that’s not how our current version of Little Red ends, which very much makes me wonder…bah. I’m losing focus.

Happy endings. Yes. Our favorite characters may have ghastly trials along the way, but as One Thousand and One Nights says,“they lived happily until there came to them the One who Destroys all Happiness (i.e. Death)).”

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Ah yes, Death, there is that. Yet so many people I know think true happiness doesn’t come until after they die. Heaven? Nirvana? Elysian Fields? Olympia? The Happy Hunting Grounds…I can go on, but I think we get the point. 

The last couple of weeks have been thoughtful for me, even painful at times. An unusual string of events led me to searching, pulling out old books, asking friends and mentors for tips and bits of strength, ideas that could give me courage and hope. 

One phrase especially stuck out, and leads me to believe the idea behind “Happily Ever After” isn’t so much an ending, but rather a continuation of things in a new light of understanding:

“Follow your bliss.”

Uh. What? 

Live Happily Ever After starting this moment.

Right. Meaning what, exactly?

Do what makes you happy. Think about, believe in, fixate on, whatever makes you happy; rather than on what makes you uncomfortable, hateful, confused, full of grief. You can only think one conscious thought at a time, so why not chose to make it a good one?

This isn’t so much “thinking positively,” as it is believing, feeling, and doing positively. Knowing that life right now is just as valuable and wonderful – regardless of whatever pain and deprivation we’ve survived thus far – as it will be after Death takes us to whatever paradise we believe in (even if that paradise is simply Nothing). 

I get stuck in my head, a lot, thinking about Winter. For some reason I think that if I can just figure it out, I won’t have to experience it any more. No more hard times, no more frustration, no more tears. 

But then what’s really happening is that I’m stuck in Winter when it’s Spring blooming around me, and then it’s lovely Summer, and isn’t Fall magnificent? Yet I haven’t been experiencing anything but snow this whole time.

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Spring is here, my friends (including you). It may be Winter in your world still, but know that underneath the snow and ice are millions of powerful little seeds just waiting to come up. Chose to shine some light on them, rather than focusing on the cold around you. 

Make your “Happily Ever After” your continuum of life right now.

The bliss phrase was my Easter Bunny, my little messenger of Spring, but maybe yours is something else. And if it is, maybe you can share in the comments? Or blog about it, and we’ll link some stories up so there’ll be many rays of sunshine from all over the world in one place at one time.  Hope and love magnified.

Meanwhile, I wish you happy celebrations for this weekend, whatever that looks like for you. Don’t have anything planned? Well today’s Fairy Tale Friday is your first seed. Grow from it what you will.

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Moment of Magic today:

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