"The Big Bang" and happy endings
Oh, what a long and spoiler-filled month it has been! And what a wonderful finale was waiting at the end of it. It made me cry, and the whole evening after I had this little ball of emotion sitting in my chest. But a happy ending! When I heard the rumors that Rory was coming back, I couldn’t imagine it would be in as lovely a way as this.
Happy endings don’t come easily anymore. I think somewhere in our adolescence we all sort of stop believing in them. We realize that the world doesn’t come with easy resolutions, and we start to think of them as passé, as clichéd. We learn that anyone can die, and after a while, stories with neat conclusions are no longer comforting, because they don’t reflect the world as we know it. And the first time we come across a writer like Joss Whedon or Russell T. Davies, we find a different kind of magic in their works, in their admission that no one is special or sheltered, that life is unfair.
It’s a very postmodern aesthetic. At first it brings a kind of relief, this willingness to accept the meaningless losses of life. But it becomes pervasive, and then depressing, and before you know it you don’t believe in resolution at all. It’s worse for writers, and for readers. Ambiguity is very literary. You’re lucky if you understand where the characters stand at the end of a story, never mind them being something so old-fashioned as happy. And this is what you read, and this is what you learn.
That’s what happened to me. I was very sheltered as a child, and when I went to high school I had a hard time dealing with all the sadness of the world around me. I had always loved to read, but in my literature classes we read hard, sad books. A lot of my friends had serious problems with themselves, with their families, with their lives. And so sorrow started to seem to me the way of the world, and I accepted it.
College was more of the same. And because I am a creative writing major, I read a lot, and wrote a lot, and I let the fairy tales be bred out of me. Because of a bad experience I had in high school, I all but stopped believing in love. Because God always seemed far away, I started to let my faith trail away. Because writing is a hard profession to live by, I began to lose faith in my future. And because the more closely I worked with the professors, the more sad and tired they seemed to me, I couldn’t see how things could ever be better in the end.
It seems silly to say it, but Doctor Who is what reminded me that I need to believe in happy endings. Not that everything will always work out, or that we’ll live happily ever after, or that everything will be beautiful and nothing will hurt. Not that things will be easy along the way. Believing that ending well is possible doesn’t negate the difficulty and sadness of life. But somehow, everything that ever hurt, or that you had to give up, or that you lost along the way will be worth it. My faith tells me that “to them that love God all things work together for good.” (Romans 8:28). I can’t always see it happening, and I can’t imagine what heaven is like.
Sometimes you have to give up the thing you love the most. And sometimes, when by rights you couldn’t ask for more, on top of your wedding you receive a box of the bluest blue ever.
Happy endings don’t come easily anymore. I think somewhere in our adolescence we all sort of stop believing in them. We realize that the world doesn’t come with easy resolutions, and we start to think of them as passé, as clichéd. We learn that anyone can die, and after a while, stories with neat conclusions are no longer comforting, because they don’t reflect the world as we know it. And the first time we come across a writer like Joss Whedon or Russell T. Davies, we find a different kind of magic in their works, in their admission that no one is special or sheltered, that life is unfair.
It’s a very postmodern aesthetic. At first it brings a kind of relief, this willingness to accept the meaningless losses of life. But it becomes pervasive, and then depressing, and before you know it you don’t believe in resolution at all. It’s worse for writers, and for readers. Ambiguity is very literary. You’re lucky if you understand where the characters stand at the end of a story, never mind them being something so old-fashioned as happy. And this is what you read, and this is what you learn.
That’s what happened to me. I was very sheltered as a child, and when I went to high school I had a hard time dealing with all the sadness of the world around me. I had always loved to read, but in my literature classes we read hard, sad books. A lot of my friends had serious problems with themselves, with their families, with their lives. And so sorrow started to seem to me the way of the world, and I accepted it.
College was more of the same. And because I am a creative writing major, I read a lot, and wrote a lot, and I let the fairy tales be bred out of me. Because of a bad experience I had in high school, I all but stopped believing in love. Because God always seemed far away, I started to let my faith trail away. Because writing is a hard profession to live by, I began to lose faith in my future. And because the more closely I worked with the professors, the more sad and tired they seemed to me, I couldn’t see how things could ever be better in the end.
It seems silly to say it, but Doctor Who is what reminded me that I need to believe in happy endings. Not that everything will always work out, or that we’ll live happily ever after, or that everything will be beautiful and nothing will hurt. Not that things will be easy along the way. Believing that ending well is possible doesn’t negate the difficulty and sadness of life. But somehow, everything that ever hurt, or that you had to give up, or that you lost along the way will be worth it. My faith tells me that “to them that love God all things work together for good.” (Romans 8:28). I can’t always see it happening, and I can’t imagine what heaven is like.
Sometimes you have to give up the thing you love the most. And sometimes, when by rights you couldn’t ask for more, on top of your wedding you receive a box of the bluest blue ever.