Blessed Are

I like the show Once Upon a Time.  I've said quite a few times that I think the show is incredibly cheesy.  I mean, it has unabashedly embraced (and I mean embraced, like a frickin' boa constrictor) the themes of fate, love conquers all, love is the strongest magic, and good always wins.  So you can enjoy this show a lot only if you blithely shrug your shoulders and accept that it's a ridiculously feel-good, predictable trip.

That said, I think I need to take a break from my cynicism--just a little one, for just a short while. :)  People need these kinds of shows, books, songs, etc., sometimes.  Sometimes they're not just guilty pleasures.  Sometimes something else breaks through.  Tonight, when I was watching Once Upon a Time, I realized that a lot of my cynicism comes from people spouting these maxims about fate and love conquering all not because they believe them, but because they think it's what they're supposed to believe, or they're trying to trick themselves into strength, into making others believe they are strong.  So much lying to ourselves--so much lying to others to make us seem like the strong people the world expects us to be.  And I get fed up, and I just want to tell all these people--just admit that you are broken.  Just admit it and then shoot for reassembly--somehow.  Just admit you don't have it all together yet.

But the maxims--themselves--are essentially true.  Or I think I believe that again anyway.  At the heart of clichés, of course, is truth--we just have to ferret it out of the words and phrases that have become so commonplace and automatic as to seem absolutely meaningless.  Is there fate?  I don't know for sure.  But I think so.  There are some things in my life that have been so brilliant and so improbable and so right all at once that they make it hard for me to believe that they weren't simply meant to be from the beginning.  And love conquers all?  Good always wins?  Yes.  Yes, that is most certainly true.  Just not necessarily on this earth.  Probably not on this earth.  I've been forgetting that.  Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . . Blessed are those who mourn . . . .

There is such beauty here on earth.  Find it.  Feel it as much as you can.  Create it--if you can.  But know there is something more.