Anatomy of Happy Endings …?

“Shane” the movie made in 1953 was the iconic model for everything heroic and noble in western movies and boys my age who watched it were swept by chivalry and we believed that happy endings pre-dominated the real life ahead of us, or the life we yet had to experience.  I felt that way but there was something that I couldn’t let go then and still think about it today. It was a happy ending, a great ending actually. It defined the standards for us who watched it and the so many other similar movies later in life. But I always wanted to go beyond the endings.  When the boy ran after Shane at the finale, shouting, “Shane, Shane, come back!” I wondered what was going to happen to Shane.  Was he wounded? What was he going to do with the rest of his life?  He was going to grow old for sure but will he die alone?  Or, maybe at some later encounter with more bad guys, will he still be as good as he was or will he meet someone better and that would be how his life will end?  Friends would tell me that it was best to leave it well enough alone and just let the story end as it did.

Well, I believed that Shane’s story had to go on just like it did in real life where no one just rides out into the sunset and that’s it.  We all love happy endings. But aren’t happy endings merely moments in time, always followed by a comma rather than a period?

Movies relate to and reflect the mood of its audience.  Movies, like novels, short stories, poetry, featured in books, are creations by myriad story tellers and if what they tell gets wide acceptance, become best sellers and be critically acclaimed, they have a way to represent the sentiments of the people in general, at a particular moment in time. Movies tell, examine and present narratives well within two hours or so. In that same window of time the audience is temporarily transported from their own realities where, happy or not, there are endings to punctuate every story. We know endings tell a lot but sometimes if we look closer they open more questions or hold gateways for the story to continue.

One more movie then I will go to the point of this musing. “The Bridge on the River Kwai” is my own personal pick for best of all time. Of course, my view is not exactly a very bold one because the film won 7 Oscars out of 8 nominations.  The movie had everything in it. There was clearly a lot of heroism, bravery, nobility of command and obedience, sacrifices, survival, human conflict, and a number of ironic twists. I also picked it for its mixed ending.  There was happy but there was sad and it left us thinking further or far longer beyond the closing credits.  Yes, the bridge was destroyed, characters from each side were killed but the whole story can be distilled in a couple of short lines. One spoken by Lt. Col. Nicholson whose last words were, “What have I done?” It was followed by the surviving POW doctor’s words at the end when all he could say was, “Madness, madness!”  The war story, which by the way, was loosely based on events that occurred on a real river at the Thai/Burma border, combined everything that can be told – the horrific nature of war, the heroism, conflicting human emotions and an ending that left many with mixed feelings.  Yes, there was an ending but we all knew the war did not end there, at least not for a few more years. The famous tune (whistled by POWs) played earlier and refrained at the ending evoked optimism but we knew the prisoners were simply moved into another POW camp which left me thinking about a few more endings before the war was going to be over.

Each of our individual stories is a lifetime while the story of our ancestry is several generations in a world whose history is scribed millennially. Every story we know or generations of stories we can ever know are mere segments of a seemingly endless roll of film. Imagine an infinitely long reel and it had been running for all this time. What we are able to witness today is a segment of film.  The history that we know, the story of our family tree, even the history of the world as we know it can all be described as mere segments of a far longer epic.  In each of those segments we find happy vignettes, sad detours and temporary amounts of elation. There are numerous happy endings – birth of a child after a long precarious pregnancy, graduations, acceptance to a college of choice, the first job, the wedding, the anniversaries, etc. Along the way there will be disappointments, setbacks, interruptions, and so on and on. Why?

Let’s look at the following mathematical series from Charles Seife’s book: 1-1+1-1+1-1+1 … It is a legitimate series.  Let’s group the numbers as (1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1) … which does not break the integrity of the series.  No matter how long we extend that (to infinity even), the final sum is Zero. But if we group the numbers differently, again without breaking the integrity of the series, as in 1+(1-1)+(1-1) + (1-1) … the sum  is 1 ! In fact, if we just jump in in the middle of that long series, cut a segment of it, we will find a sum of 1 if we want to.

The point there is that along an infinitely long story, we can always pick a segment that can be punctuated by a happy ending. So, if I heeded what my friends were telling me I should have just let Shane go on his journey after the encounter at the saloon and leave it there.

From that we can all say that in our lives, short for some, long for others, there will be in a long series of events many pockets of happy endings and disappointments. That is just the way it is. It then says that we have a choice. We can pick the segments in a way we treat the number series above so as to collect the happy vignettes, learn from the disappointments and failures, and collect only the +1’s.

We do not want to ignore the disappointments or failures because they are just as important as the happy ones.  In some exceptional cases exceptional individuals bounced back much higher from when and where they hit rock bottom. Is it not that one can launch himself or herself from solid rock (even from the bottom) higher and with more energy than from soft sand (at the surface)?

Looking back at the number series we see that in real life, no matter how perfectly anyone tries to make it, events occur as plusses and minuses. Just as in the series, the numbers will end in a sum of either a zero or a one. Zero, here, is not an indictment but a state of mind. 1 is not the euphoric opposite but it too is a state of mind. This takes us quickly to how happiness had been defined for us by philosophers, dreamers, social workers and politicians. Yes, happiness has had the most variations in definitions – from the romantic to the sublime, from the profound to the superficial. Happiness is in fact a series of plusses and minuses.  It can be the average of all of them if anyone summarizes his or her own life stories, or stories told by others. But what exactly are they? Can we bottle them? Can we express them in a formula? Do we have a specific value that is applicable to everyone? The quick answer is no. The slower answer is still no.

If happiness is a state of mind then we know it is a first person experience.  It is how you or I feel.  Last we check nobody can make that determination other than you on how you really feel because however anyone may try, psychiatrists included, only you knows what your state of mind is exactly. Let’s forget the laughter, ebullient signs of merriment, ear-to-ear grin of contentment. What is inside that head and what the heart says – lively thoughts and rapid heartbeat – are what will truly describe happiness. Often others will dictate what we should be happy about or what will make us happy. Forgetting that happiness is a state of mind, folks will resort to material things like wealth, status and reputation because those are visible and in so doing define happiness with things physically measurable. It is not so.

How often do we read or hear about unhappy people at the peak of their career or at the height of their popularity, or mansions inhabited by very sad people. Meanwhile, don’t we see or hear about happy people from places we least expect to harbor conditions conducive to happiness?  If happiness is a state of mind is it fair to say that a happy rich man who owns property in Manhattan is a lot happier than a man in Mongolia whose only property is a horse, a herd of yak and temporary tent for his family?  Are children enrolled in an exclusive prep school happier than barely clothed children going after small crabs on the seashores of Bohol Island in Central Philippines?

The anatomy of happiness will defy autopsy. How can we when the very nature of happiness is merely a +1 in a series of plus ones and minus ones? If it is a state of mind punctuated by a comma, we cannot and should not hold on to it but enjoy it for the moment.  Then we move on to find more of it, learn from the minuses, and hopefully we will all find in the number series of life more +1’s than -1’s. At the very end, a finite end in a never ending series, we may get our life summed up to a +1.