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There's a Happy Ending... I Promise.

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“What kind of story are we in?”

Let’s be honest – this is a big question. The type of question you think about in the shower as you shampoo your hair for maybe a little too long. Or that keeps you up into the wee hours of the morning as you face your existential dread. My initial reaction to this question was surprisingly negative. We’re in a pretty messed up story full of heartbreak, injustice, death, and cruelty.


Just yesterday I read an article about a boat which sank off the coast of Italy where 117 people drowned and only 3 survived. They were refugees from Libya trying to make it to Europe and could not afford the extra cost their smugglers would charge for a life jacket… the extra cost their smugglers would charge for a life jacket.


We are living in a world where profit wins out over life.


To make this story even more appalling, these smugglers often times are fronts for human trafficking rings and the refugees end up being sold for even more profit.


We see countless stories like these all around us. Even more close to home, I struggle when I see my students, teenagers, deal with problems no teenager should ever face: homelessness, hunger, parents (or even themselves) in and out of rehab and prison, mental health issues that are still too stigmatized with the youth for them to feel safe enough to say “I’m hurting!” It’s hard not to get frustrated at the story that is our world. Our “co-authors” seem invested in themselves instead of the group.  
This was my initial reaction. There is so much bad in the world that we often neglect to think about the good. But then, after I finished reading about tragedy, I looked over at my mom. We were on a flight home from El Paso having picked up my wedding dress.

At that moment I realized how incredibly lucky I am. Not only do I have the luxury of being able to fly to another city in the same state I live in to pick up a dress, but I have my mother with me to do it. Then I thought about the significance of the dress. I have a man crazy enough to want to marry me. To spend forever with me. I have a house, a good job, a support system. MY story is one fixed around love, friendship, and luck. This is not to say I haven't faced hardship or my share of struggles; trust me, I have. But at this moment, this chapter of my story feels like a moment of resolution. I'm sure more conflict will come, but right now, things are pretty great.


In our reading, Benjamin asserts “Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death. In other words, it is natural history to which his stories refer back” (49). Our stories, the individual novels of our lives, all end the same. It becomes up to us then to fill the pages with good. To remember that in the mess of the world, we can bring good. And perhaps that good we bring to another influences them to bring good into their world, and so on. We cannot fix all the bad. But we live on borrowed time, so my story better be a damn good one.

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