“Happily Ever After” is such an enchanting notion. Hard times abound, your life is controlled by a wicked stepmother and you are wearing rags while your evil step-sisters dress in ball gowns. Day in, day out, cleaning & scrubbing and you don’t ever get to go to the ball. Suddenly there is a knock at the door and a handsome prince with a glass slipper transforms your life. Your dreams come true and you live “Happily Ever After.”

Oh, if only there were a glass slipper out there for each of us. A charming prince arriving at our door on a white stallion, keen on stealing us away to oversee the kingdom. The remainder of our life spent free of turmoil, chaos and stress ; no uprising in the castle, no famine, droughts or plagues, no death of our beloved prince. Only an ever-after filled with bliss.

But life is not a fairytale and for most of us our ever-after is filled with an unpredictable balance between cleaning and scrubbing and galloping unencumbered into the sunset.

“Happily Ever After” is an enchanting notion. But Ever After ends eventually. Perhaps we need to embrace a “Happily This Moment ” notion into our lives. To be ever present to immediate, spontaneous joy we experience daily. To dance at the ball when the slipper fits and find wisdom and acceptance in the drudgery. Perhaps then, we can become the sovereign of our own destiny.