Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Happily Ever After

In Stephen Sondeims’ magnificant musical INTO THE WOODS we learn about happily ever after. ACT I begins with the combined stories of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk and a baker and his wife who are trying to start a family.

Everybody knows these stories, save the baker and his wife, so we get to witness how the wolf got butchered and spit up grandma, Rapunzel let down her hair, Cinderella finds Prince Charming, the baker and his wife have their baby and Jack tricks the giant and pleases his Mom.

We all love happy endings!

ACT I ends with everybody living happily ever after! There is much applause. The theme of ACT I is “I wish!”

ACT II describes what happens in happily ever after. It’s not a pretty sight. The baker and his wife need more room for their family but can’t afford it. The wife of the giant that Jack killed makes her way down another bean stalk and destroys the houses that they live in (along with a witches’ garden which is never a good idea). Rapunzel becomes hysterical and flees! Cinderella finds Prince Charming to be one boring dude but he does her too and seduces the baker’s wife. The giant’s wife then kills the baker’s wife.

You get the drift. Happily ever after is not all that it’s cracked up to be! ACT II ends with stunned audience. The theme of ACT II is “I know.”

Then a funny thing happens. After everything is said and done with destruction and unhappiness everywhere, Cinderella says, “I wish…”

And that’s how it ends.

“I wish” is followed by “I know” which leads to a more desperate “I wish.”

Unless we get struck in “I know” which is the reality of who we are, how we live our lives, our families, work and the people we choose to be with. Most of these things started out happily enough. Our parents wished for us to be in most cases, we wished for the spouse, the job and the friends that we have. And we got them!

And too often it becomes something less than a wish. It becomes I know that I’m not happy with who I am, what I’ve become or what I do. This isn’t what I wished for!

Husbands and wives no longer support the other but simply take instead most from the other. Unhappiness is born and it grows a bean stalk. Our families can drive us nuts. We become victims of the jobs and jobs can be abusive. People we love die when they shouldn’t. Bad things happen when we’ve just done the best that we know how. We’ve given everything only to find that our lives are messes of which we are desperate to crawl out!

It’s certainly applicable to my life! I had the life that I wanted; the wife, the career, the family, the house, and the friends. It was all happily ever after!

And then it wasn’t.

So, a couple co-existed which is not the same as living! The career became all consuming. The kids left. Friends began to demand more than any one person is possibly capable of giving. Life became oppressive.

I was lost in the woods and during the darkest of days that I lived through I can now see a few things that strike me. There are bad people who do bad things and really don’t give a shit, save for themselves (which is the definition of a bad person). Sometimes we happen to be married to them. Sometimes it’s us and we don’t admit it! But they’re here, lurking behind trees like wolves and often banding together to become giants who will stomp on you just as much as looking at you. It’s all about them (dedicated to a Board Chair who chooses to remain anonymous).

There are also Saints who pepper our lives, showing up at just the right time to save us from it all … like Woodsmen who use their axes on wolves or witches who turn out to be good when we thought they were anything but. They are always unexpected and end up being the blessings that we need at just the right time! We are the angles that God has given us to help each other through it all.

You would think it would just leave us all cynical which is how the bad people get born. We’ve got every reason in the world to by in a world that is all about us getting by regardless of anybody or anything else. There have been days when I was so angry at it all that I wanted to damn others to hell and just take what I needed for myself!

But you know what?

I wish.

And I know.

One day I will have what I wish for.

And I’ll be out of the woods.