Are We Afraid of Happy Endings?

When I was younger, I have watched a lot of films that had happy endings. It was as though there was a formula where the hero or heroine of the movie would first encounter many difficulties and then after a certain turn of events, they would finally reach their reward. Things would be resolved, the audience would be satisfied, and the main characters would have their happy ending. In many local romantic films, this would all culminate in a wedding where everyone would joyfully celebrate with the main couple.

These days, however, I’ve noticed that more movies refuse to have such endings. More and more films choose to show either a tragedy or an ending that doesn’t resolve every problem presented in the movie. For an award winning film, it seems almost impossible to expect any happy ending at all.

Why the change in our preference for a movie ending? Perhaps people thought that those happy endings fail to tell the truth about the real lives of people. It could also be that the world has grown darker and in experiencing so much pain, we could no longer relate to that hope presented by the older films.

I’d like to agree that there is so much more to this life than the happy endings shown in many movies. Not everyone marries the man or the woman one loves. Not every hero lives after fighting for a cause. We must accept so many defeats and injustices in this life and not cling to the illusion that everything will work out in our favor if we only continue to do our best.

But I think there are still some things we should never throw away so quickly. In our desire to present one side of the truth, we must never neglect the other side that could also teach us something in life.

For while this world is truly filled with suffering and pain, it is also filled with beauty and goodness. While we experience many defeats, we are also given various occasions for triumph.

The happy endings presented in the old movies need not be an insult to the tragedies that happen in this life. They could instead foreshadow the eternal triumph of those who will never give up despite all the darkness in the world. In the eyes of the world, one life may end up as a failure. But in the eyes of God, even death could be a victory. In the eyes of people, a person may have lived a lonely life. But in the eyes of Him who sees, that person has lived a life of true and lasting love.

Let us not be afraid of happy endings. Let us instead be strengthened in hope and believe that even in the most disastrous life, God can still weave an everlasting good.

“Therefore we don’t faint, but though our outward person is decaying, yet our inward person is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory, while we don’t look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” — 2 Corinthians 4:16–18, WEBBE