Art is not supposed to be pleasant

If we always expect a happy ending, we deprive the humanities of humanity.

There I was in my therapist’s office crying, but this time was different. I have been in and out of therapy since I was 12, and in the 20 years I have been doing this, I have never once made a therapist cry.

I got close six years ago when I finally decided I was feeling better and didn’t need to see my then-therapist anymore. I confidently strode into his office and declared that I had been cured! His face fell a little bit. He acted in the warm, professional manner he always did, but I could tell he was bummed out.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I have been the favorite client of five out of seven of the therapists I have seen in my life because those therapists always seemed crestfallen every time I announced that I had been miraculously cured and no longer needed therapy.

I win when it comes to therapy.

Yet there my therapist was across from me, his eyes getting red and glassy as I sobbed and explained how frequently I feel unworthy of love or affection.

How I constantly fret that my next step will be the trip wire that blows up all of my relationships.

How much I grovel and apologize for existing.

I’m definitely not “cured.” I just got really good at ignoring my feelings.

The case for being bored and miserable

Truthfully, I have never been great with just sitting with my feelings. I don’t think many people are — particularly in this day and age where things are convenient and safe.

Before the advent of all the medical and technological advancements in maternal medicine today, a woman’s chance of dying as a result of childbirth was 1%, but now it’s 0.000174%. Thanks to a robust civil justice system that astronomically improved car safety, automotive fatalities have decreased from 28 deaths per 100,000 people in 1970 to 12 deaths per 100,000 people in 2019. Food manufacturers can no longer can food with lead; meat must be butchered in sanitary conditions; and stores can’t add plaster, cow brains or formaldehyde to your milk to cut costs.

We have it pretty good now, and I would never argue to ever go back to a time without antibiotics, non-discrimination laws or FDA-approved dairy requirements. I do, however, think that we are living through a time where we miss the freedom that a certain amount of risk and danger allows us. We’ve probably done too much to mitigate risk, pain, boredom and heartbreak, and it has handicapped our ability to feel hopeful about the future. Moreover, it keeps us from being creative and from feeling deeply.

The media we consume has even gotten “safer” in some respects. The other day, I got into a conversation about how the movie “I Am Legend” is getting a sequel. For a moment, I thought this was a “Hamlet 2” situation, but there is apparently an alternate ending in which Will Smith’s character doesn’t die. (I didn’t see the movie, so I don’t actually understand what’s going on.)

From a Hollywood producer’s point of view, this makes a lot of sense. Why spend the time and money coming up with a truly unique concept and taking the financial risk of producing it when you have a successful idea that just needs to be popped back into the microwave?

Creativity — and the benefit we gain from it — has taken a serious hit.

And then, a spindle

In my favorite adaptation of the fairytale “The Sleeping Beauty,” a beautiful baby girl is born to a king and queen. They invite all the fairies in the realm to bless the child with gifts — all, that is, except for one. When this malevolent fairy appears, she punishes the kingdom by cursing the baby that she will prick her finger on a spindle and bleed to death when she comes of age.

Luckily, the final fairy had not given her blessing. She instead blesses the princess so that she will not die but just fall asleep until her one true love comes to wake her.

With a beautiful promise like that, you think her parents would have relaxed. They didn’t.

The king bans not only all the spindles from the kingdom but all pointy objects. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that on her 16th birthday, the evil fairy brings her a spindle as a present and — not knowing what it is — dances gleefully with it until she pricks herself.

As we all know, the story ends happily, but I can’t help but imagine how awful her life must have been up until that point. Not being allowed to be around spindles or any other sharp object meant that she never got to learn Spindle Safety 101 and never got the opportunity to create anything.

No weaving. No sewing. No lacemaking. Nothing requiring a spindle, let alone anything you need a sharp tool for.

We, like the princess, have now found ourselves living in a spindle-less society with nearly nothing to torment or afflict us, and now we’re bored, but not in a productive way. Instead of sitting with boredom and discomfort, we fill the void with whatever distraction we have at our fingertips.

Alternate endings

“… since mermaids have no tears, she suffered more acutely.”

— Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”

Hans Christian Andersen’s original version of “The Little Mermaid” couldn’t be more different from the Disney version many of us grew up on. Although written for children, the story is dark and tragic, directing the reader to a specific message about pride, self-sacrifice and wholehearted love.

In the original tale, a young mermaid princess longs to be human. When her sisters turn 15, each is allowed one day to go to the ocean’s surface and observe human life. On her 15th birthday, she travels to the surface, sees a handsome young prince caught in a shipwreck, and saves his life. Naturally, she is smitten and turns to a sea witch to turn her into a human. The sea witch drives a hard bargain.

She promises to turn her into a human, and she will be immensely beautiful, but she will be in constant pain when she walks. She will also give up her voice for the rest of her life. And it gets worse — although mermaids can live for 300 years, they have no souls, and when they die, they will not enter heaven.

"… for when once your shape has become like a human being, you can no more be a mermaid. You will never return through the water to your sisters or to your father's palace again. And if you do not win the love of the prince, so that he is willing to forget his father and mother for your sake and to love you with his whole soul and allow the priest to join your hands that you may be man and wife, then you will never have an immortal soul. The first morning after he marries another, your heart will break and you will become foam on the crest of the waves.”

The mermaid agrees, and the sea witch cuts out her tongue as payment. The prince falls in love with someone else and marries her instead.

The mermaid is offered a reprieve in the form of her sisters selling their hair to the sea witch for an enchanted blade. She can return to her family if she kills the prince by sunrise. But upon seeing the prince she loves happily asleep next to his new bride, she decides against it.

In a merciful twist of fate, she transforms into a “daughter of the air” and, as a spirit, will spend 300 years doing good deeds before being welcomed into heaven.

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The Disney version only takes the basic shape of the original story. Disney’s fairytales don’t have a reputation for tragedy or bittersweet resolutions. I won’t blame you if you prefer the ‘90s animated version to the one above. In fact, this is a popular subject of feminist rewrites and criticism. The themes of quiet femininity, self-sacrifice and changing yourself for a romantic interest are not popular among today’s readers.

But like many historical female tropes that get criticized today for their quiet and sensitive nature, we sometimes fail to see the good in the story.

The mermaid feels an honest and charitable love towards the prince and makes a serious gamble to be with him. Had her efforts paid off, it would have all been worth it. Even though it didn’t, she still had the much bigger reward of being able to gain a soul.

It’s a painful story, but it shows an element of humanity that we cannot risk ignoring: What it means to be vulnerable and what it means to live life with our whole heart.

The case for a broken heart

In college, I had a friend who I found incredibly charming. He was handsome, spiritual, creative, charismatic, and it didn’t hurt that he was British and spoke beautiful French. I was always a tiny bit in love with him.

Our lives went in separate directions for a few years, but we got back in touch about five years ago. He was trying to get a business off the ground and dealing with the aftermath of some personal problems, so as a favor, I used some professional connections to land him a gig. I can’t remember what exactly transpired or who was “wrong” in the first place, but we had an explosive disagreement over something and — except for one text message where he attempted to apologize, and I pretended to “forgive” him — we never spoke again.

Almost exactly three years later, this friend died in a car accident.

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I thought I had been “magnanimous” and had “forgiven” him while “enforcing my boundaries,” but in reality, I had submerged my heart into a little concrete box so it would never get hurt again. I had many chances to soften my heart — to extend an olive branch in return. Instead, I chose to keep myself guarded, and it took a catastrophe for me to release the death grip I had on my heart.

He got engaged just a few days before the car accident that ultimately took his life. At his funeral, I noticed how calm and poised and relaxed his fiancée was. If anyone had the right to be a hot mess, it was her, but she was as calm as a summer’s day.

At the time, I was too ashamed to talk to her, but I had always admired her bravery in that moment. We get few guarantees in life, and one of those uncertain things is love. To truly love someone, you must be willing to surrender your full heart without knowing how they will treat it.

Your heart might get broken through unrequited love, illness, betrayal — or it might just get smashed into a million pieces in a car accident.

My friend’s fiancée never knew how this would end, but she gave her heart over willingly and completely. I suspect she knew that the depths of your grief will always match the great heights of your joy. And that is a gamble worth taking.

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The hero’s journey is strewn with roses

“Let it strew the path with roses, for roses always go with thorns.”

— Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” Act

In the final act of “The Magic Flute,” Tamino and his love Pamina must pass three challenges as a couple if they are to be together. During one of the challenges, Pamina sings the line above — it’s burned into my memory.

And in 2 Corinthians 12:7–10, Paul begs God to remove a thorn from him. God replies, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” God lets Paul sit with the discomfort like I was sitting with a thorn in my soul during this therapy session.

While sitting in my therapist’s office — me crying over something I didn’t realize I had buried deep under every distraction imaginable — he reminded me that it’s impossible to get from Point A in a story to Point B without conflict.

Perhaps we are too used to “safe” art, which doesn’t challenge us emotionally. We like to come up with alternative endings when we don’t like the ending of a story. We don’t like the discomfort of out-of-date words and phrases, so we change them at the expense of the human experience.

At some point, we’ll need to accept that happy endings are not happy unless some of them aren’t.