The social construct needs revisiting
And they lived happily ever after. That’s not how this is supposed to start, right? Clearly something’s wrong with this piece of writing; has nobody taught me that this is not how you start a story, that’s how you end it? As much as I’d like to believe that this really is the ending, it saddens me to know that it’s not. Fairytales are perhaps the biggest cause of depression in young women. The idea seems preposterous, right? How can children’s stories possibly cause depression in adults? Well, imagine growing up to the idea of a happily ever after and then being struck by reality. The truth is, reality seems so dark and gloomy as compared to the ‘happily ever after’ of fairytales because there is a fundamental flaw in the definition of ‘happily ever after’. While we spend our lives searching for that ‘happily ever after’, we fail to realise that we were looking for the wrong thing all that time.
Some people are highly lucky. They do well at school, find someone at university and eventually get settled. That’s the idea of a ‘happily ever after’ in an ideal world. Sadly, however, we live in a world that is far from being ideal. In this imperfect world, while trying to meet these ridiculous standards, we often lose ourselves and our inner peace in the process.
The truth is, reality seems so dark and gloomy as compared to the ‘happily ever after’ of fairytales because there is a fundamental flaw in the definition of ‘happily ever after’. While we spend our lives searching for that ‘happily ever after’, we fail to realise that we were looking for the wrong thing all that time.
It isn’t unheard of to hear young individuals complain about how they have good jobs, financial stability and good friends yet there’s a void that seems to remain at all times. People look for answers to questions they don’t even know; confusion is all they seem to get. This confusion, in reality, goes back to when these individuals were young children who were being instilled with the preposterous idea that a happily ever after means meeting your prince or rescuing your princess. In the process, these fairytales forgot to mention that sometimes, there is no princess to rescue and the prince doesn’t come. Isn’t it unfair that individuals in such situations don’t get their ‘happily ever after’ at all.
No matter how successful an individual, if he or she is not married at an ‘appropriate’ age, they will be the victim of pity. Nobody sees what you’ve accomplished in life unless you have a family of your own to prove your success to the world. A married scientist is a scientist; a single scientist is a mad scientist.
We often complain about how the global divorce rates are increasing day by day. Has it occurred to anyone that it may be because of the fact that individuals marry one another not out of love but out of fear of what society will think if they end up alone? The concept of love has been tainted by society; individuals delude themselves to believe that they are in love when in fact all they want is to ‘fit in’ and be a normal member of the society.
Redefining happily ever after is of paramount importance. Young children should be taught that while it’s true that some ‘happily ever afters’ involve princes and princesses, others involve careers, achievement of goals, lifelong friendships and love in its truest forms.
Being at a stage when most of your friends are getting married or have found someone can be truly pressurising for any individual. With each friend that walks down the aisle, you are left wondering what it is that you’ve done wrong. You’re at a point where you’re tremendously happy for your friends, but are equally scared for yourself. This unnecessary conflict wouldn’t exist, of course, if society stopped feeding irrational ideas to individuals at a young age.
As we grow older, these concepts are further stressed upon everywhere we go. With every new film that’s released, you find yourself questioning why your life isn’t perfect. Nobody remembers to mention the fact that perfection is not an absolute concept; it’s a highly relative concept. In the end, instead of looking for perfection, individuals start criticising every minute imperfection, not realising that these imperfections are what make life worth living.
Redefining happily ever after is of paramount importance. Young children should be taught that while it’s true that some ‘happily ever afters’ involve princes and princesses, others involve careers, achievement of goals, lifelong friendships and love in its truest forms. Only when young women stop waiting for their princes to show up will they get up and do something for themselves. Only when young men will realise that no princesses need any saving done will they learn to treat women as equals. We talk about gender inequality yet we fail to understand the fact that we ourselves promote gender inequality. Let’s redefine the phrase happily ever after and lead to a genuinely happier society instead of promoting silent suffering by promising young people a world that may not always exist. And that is when everyone will be living happily ever after.