Billy Coffey
Billy Coffey

Writing your story

March 12, 2010  

image courtesy of photobucket.com

image courtesy of photobucket.com

The bedtime story is a given in our house, an activity that has evolved into a ritual. And I don’t mind. Not really anyway, provided there is enough time. Reading a story to my children is an event unto itself more than a bridge to travel from awake to asleep. Not because of the telling, but because of the question-and-answer period afterward.

Because to them, a tale cannot end. My children are still too young to understand the mechanics of a story, of the introduction, the rising and falling action, and the resolution. They enjoy all but the last. So after every knight slays every evil dragon and saves every damsel in distress, the inevitable question is always asked:

“What happened then?”

To simply say, “Nothing, that’s just the end,” won’t do. I’ve tried that, and to unsatisfactory results. So I have to come up with something else.

Like maybe the dragon’s mother comes and swallows up the knight as punishment for picking on her poor dragon baby. Or the knight and damsel got married and both had to get a real job to pay for the mortgage on their castle. Or that either the knight or the damsel was a witch in disguise all along and the dragon was the good guy.

And if that doesn’t work, I’ll get tired and say something like, “The dragon stopped chasing after knights and damsels and started eating little children who refused to go to bed instead.” That usually does the trick.

But I can’t blame them. Fairy tales capture us early in life. They speak to some hidden inner part of us longing to bring life into a clearer focus. They teach us impossibility is simply a word rather than a truth. Stories allow us to indulge in a freedom our circumstances often do not.

And that, I think, is why the ending is so important to my kids. To them, a story must end in the right way — with the maximum amount of happiness and the minimum amount of pain. No one should die, for instance. Not even the villain. It’s better if the bad guy just got hurt a little, which convinced him to mend his ways to the point where he became a good neighbor to the knight and damsel. Even at their young age, my kids already know the story continues. Something else always happens.

Yes, that is a bit simplistic, especially in such a complicated world. But in that simplicity are the seeds of a knowledge I see sprouting in my children. A knowledge I think everyone should realize more often.

We are all writing our own story.

Our days are our pages, filled with our triumphs and failures, our big moments and our small hours. Sometimes we write with passion, other times with doubt, and many times with both. But still, we write. Whether we know we are or not, whether we want to or don’t. Even making the choice to say nothing says a lot. God provides the paper and the pen, but he expects us to do the telling. Our story is ours and ours alone. He’ll do the editing when we’re done.

We don’t have a choice in that. We do, however, have a choice in what sort of story it will be. Drama or comedy? Fairy tale or tragedy? Romance or horror? That’s largely up to us. The quality of our lives can be determined by whether we regard the next chapter of our lives with hope or dread.

Maybe that’s why the ending is always the most important part. Because all the pain and suffering in a story is worth it as long as the last three words are “happily ever after.”

There is an innate human desire to possess the faith that if you hang in there long enough, things will work out in the end. I happen to think that’s true. I might be a grown man, but a part of me still believes in those fairy tales. And always will.

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Comments

  • http://www.randommusings-helen.blogspot.com Helen

    Child eating dragon…very clever…

  • http://iamapistachio.blogspot.com Rebecca

    Excellent post. Your reasons are precisely why I love fairy tales.

  • http://thoughtsthatmove.blogspot.com/ Wendy

    Oh this is just awesome! I wrote with a whole boat load of doubt yesterday. One of those days. But today is a new day.

    You just might have children’s books writing up your sleeve too. I like the bit about the dragon’s mother swallowing the knight!

    Great post.
    ~ Wendy

  • http://www.moonboatcafe.com Cassandra Frear

    C S Lewis wrote somewhere that fairy tales exist because they say something that is essentially true about life. They are MYTH — large themes that tell deep truth.

  • http://lauraboggess.blogspot.com laura

    I love this idea of my life being written, telling a story. I’ll admit, I’m a pushover for a happy ending. I always hate to come to the end though. Miss the characters, carry them with me a while. In that sense, I ‘m like your kids, Billy–wanting more.

    I guess we all do.

  • http://katshappyathome.blogspot.com Kathy

    Wonderful post. I always hope things will end with happily ever after.

  • http://martyduane.com Marty Duane

    I’ve often viewed each day as a chapter in my life. We can either choose to make the contents of that chapter good or bad. Most of the time, I choose good. But sometimes, the dragon and I do get in a good tussle, and on these days, I remember it is the end that counts.

    Great post, Billy.

  • http://www.frisbiesrus.blogspot.com Lorianne

    Indeed!

  • http://aspiretoleadaquietlife.blogspot.com A Simple Country Girl

    “The quality of our lives can be determined by whether we regard the next chapter of our lives with hope or dread.”

    That statement is so very true. Even if we are staring down a dragon’s throat and wondering what’s next, if we tickle him under the chin just a bit, we may be surprised at how much sooner the Happy comes!

    My son usually takes over the story and rattles on (wonder where he gets that?) so much that I often times fall asleep half-draped over his bed. Of course I awaken with his little fingers poking my eyeballs or a wild elbow flinging me in the head…

    Blessings.

  • http://www.ubervu.com/conversations/www.billycoffey.com/2010/03/writing-your-story-2/ uberVU – social comments

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by ElizabethSCraig: On writing our story–with happy endings: http://bit.ly/9e91JB…

  • http://www.brockhenning.com Brock Henning

    Billy, great post. Reminded me to jump back into bedtime reading with our three children. We had started scampering through The Wind in the Willows with Ratty, Mole, Badger, and Mr. Toad, then we allowed the busyness of the past few months to snuff out our nightly adventures.

    There’s something of a star-twinkling quality to acting out the characters voices, watching my kids’ eyes fixed on a point in the room, completely lost to the real world and alive in a dream world. Something deep inside all of us knows we are destined for a fairy-tale ending.

  • http://www.BridgetChumbley.com Bridget

    Me too! What a sad existence if we didn’t have the hope of a “Happily Ever After!”

  • http://www.chrissulli.com Chris Sullivan

    I remember being like that as a kid. I never wanted the story to end. I wanted to know what happened next. A little piece of it might even be that we become attached to the characters in these stories and their stories ending is a lot like losing someone we have grown close to.

  • http://blog.breakthroughalaska.com jasonS

    Great post, Billy.

  • http://www.joannesher.com Joanne Sher

    It has been WAY too long since I’ve read your blog (or anyone else’s for that matter). I’ve been too busy writing my story (in your sense as well as the traditional sense :D ) to read. I am SO glad I let twitter tempt me to stop by.

    Such an incredible reminder – and one I needed more than you can possibly imagine today.

  • http://lexiconluvr.blogspot.com L.T. Elliot

    I’m still a fairy-tale-dreamer, myself. One of my favorite songs says,

    “We are words
    on pages that we’ve left unturned
    an ending no one’s ever heard
    We are a story, slowly unfolding
    Beautiful words.”

    It’s called “Beautiful words” by The Afters. I like the idea of being a story, slowly unfolding.

  • http://springsinthedesert.wordpress.com SpringsInTheDesert

    nice post…we all live for that happy ending…And I believe that it all depends on how we write the story…

  • http://susan-moment.blogspot.com/ Susan

    I’m thinking I’m glad I know the Dragon Slayer and the Author of my story … and that it does have a happy ending indeed …

  • http://www.gettingdownwithjesus.blogspot.com Jennifer @ GDWJ

    ON ENDINGS …

    When I write news stories, I always write the ending first. I can’t write the lead, until I know the ending. It goes against everything I learned in J-school but it’s the only way I can make sense of a news story that I’m writing.

    Interestingly enough, when I write a blog post, I never, ever, EVER know how it’s supposed to end … until I reach the end.

    My brain works weird like that. How ’bout you? Did you know how Snow Day would end before you wrote it? How ’bout your blog posts?