Blog 2216 – 11.11.2021

Happily Ever After

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day during the eleventh month, the armistice at the end of the Great War was signed. Many believed at the time that horrific and brutal conflict would surely be our last and it would be happily ever after for mankind. Today in many places around the world people stop their regular work to honor all those who have died in wars.

I wrote in this space several weeks ago about the beginning line of a lot of fairytales: “Once Upon A Time” today I’d like you to consider for a few moments the closing phrase of many if not most fairytales: “And they lived happily ever after.”

Some people’s idea of heaven is “Happily ever after.” The concept is so boring that it is not only the end of many fairy tales but romantic- comedies as well. How many long running TV series end when the couple marries and we see the “Just Married” sign on the back of their car as they drive out of sight to live we are assured happily ever after.

I just do not believe in that sort of happily ever after. Life is a journey an adventure and sadly to retire to an easy chair or porch swing sounds less like wedding bells and more like the poem “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” That bell instead of marking a funeral with a supposed pie-in-the sky act to follow should be an alarm clock to wake us up to all the life/lives we have yet to live.

The concept of making a bucket list of all the things we would like to do before this adventure ends has become quite popular of late. What is on your bucket list? Why have you not ticked off all those things and added a hundred more already? I was thinking about getting a wooden dowel (that is a cylindrical peg of various lengths and diameters. What I had in mind was one or probably quite a few about the diameter of a half dollar coin and long enough to hold so I could saw off one eighth of an inch slices. After sanding the edges a bit I would take a marker and write on both sides “TUIT.” You may have already guess where I am headed with this.

In a few weeks when my last work assignment ends and I go home to my lovely and loving wife Linda in Houston, Texas to continue our happily ever after together, I figure to have a bit more free time on my hands. Much as I enjoy writing, reading books, and watching movies I want to get out and meet as many people as I can. I hope that I can convince my wife to travel. Paris has been on our bucket list for a long time and as soon as the COVID-19 threat there wains we have the funds already put aside to make the trip. I hope to travel there and back by ocean liner like in one of my favorite movies, the Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr love story from the late nineteen-fifties, “An Affair To Remember.”

Back to those sawed slices of wood with the letters T-U-I-T written on both sides. I want to hand them out to as many people as I can throughout the remainder of my days wherever we travel with the words, “I have searched the world looking for you to give you something to help you with your happily ever after. All those wonderful and exciting things you have been putting off saying ‘I’ll do it when I get a round TUIT’ well here it is at last. Enjoy your happily ever after beginning right now.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zk8ZWN6XJEjjKR0K0UWuiR8h7pnKLMuq/view?usp=drivesdk

One More Day