Happy Endings and So Forth

Happy ending! Roll credits. Fade to black. Americans love a happy ending…or, if they can’t have a triumph, an ending that concludes tragically but nobly: “Under tremendous pressure to deliver, Simone Biles fell while performing her famous vault in the team competition, smashed her skull severing her spinal cord, and died on the spot. Memorial flowers crowd her home town.” (People don’t like hearing that someone was permanently disabled, better to die heroically.) Consider the melodrama of the fabulously successful but pessimistic Avengers: End Game. Granted, we all need reasons to cheer or vent tearful emotions, and we’d prefer if the onus of performance were on someone else. We don’t want to be the ones taking the risks. Distant people don’t feel any more real to some of us than Marvel characters, so people who’ve never competed at an international level feel free to criticize Simone Biles for taking care of herself at the Olympics. Elsewhere, certain politicians mock the DC police who suffered horrific attack defending them. Sometimes even loved ones don’t measure up to outrageous demands. Recently, I learned of adult children of a man dying slowly and horribly of incurable disease who stood beside his bed and berated him for not trying hard enough to live. These past few months I’ve learned a lot about life.

What constitutes a happy ending? Look at what we do. This week as the Olympics coverage counted medals, my dear friend sat beside her mother for day after day easing her transition with love and comfort while she died peacefully of old age. In contrast, as the COVID virus mutates, others risk their own lives and the lives of their loved ones to demonstrate fierce loyalty to philosophies that claim viral infection is trivial and partisan—as though even the health of their friends and family members doesn’t matter next to their political convictions.

After I was certified in hypnotherapy and witnessed regressions, I confronted evidence that we have no endings…only progression. No “get out of jail free” even in death. Whether or not you accept quantum hints that we’re made of energy, the game changes as we gradually discover our concepts of truth in both history and science are woefully incomplete. The power granted to our minds can impact solid reality—for good or ill. Ethical and religious precepts have been twisted to fit a moment or egos, drawing curtains in front of information influential followers don’t wish to see. Achievements and buildings and cultures which will “go down in history” are eventually forgotten. So what is the point?

Let’s assume we were sent to be stewards of the Earth and to learn lessons about loving ourselves and everyone else. School is never dismissed. Our achievements are there to demonstrate…Courage? Determination? Love? Reason? We’re thrilled when a woman from the Philippines earns the country’s first ever gold and weeps with joy. To be seen as a worthy member of the world population is belonging, a basic need. To their credit, many spectators from the U.S. and elsewhere know to celebrate the effort they see in all the competitors, the optimism, the new friendships, the fresh realizations that we’re very much the same under our diversity. We worry about people who may look different being bullied and the Afghan translators we promised to protect and young women endangered by their pregnancies, because we owe them and they’re people, too. Endings are the real lie. There is no finish line. We reap what we sow…ad infinitum. The real heroes understand. We need to act for our awareness and for the future, because the future will happen, even if humankind fades to black.