Check imagination at the door.

Back to sounding grumpy, I suppose. The event on Sunday finished early enough that I could catch a movie on TV. Already, I've forgotten what it was called and it's not worth the effort to look it up in the paper. It was an action movie. Hero is wronged, hero meets girl, hero decides to kick butt, and finally, hero gets girl.

Basically, it was a chance to shut off the brain and just absorb some uplifting variation of the above theme. Slightly different people, slightly differing reasons, but in the end, guy wins against bad guys and gets the girl. Except, as I watched it, fresh after shooting a wedding, it wasn't uplifting.

In fact, it was depressing to realize that we have been programmed to need someone of the opposite sex to complete the story. That society reminds us, each and every time, that we need to be a couple, a pair, a duo, or whatever. What would happen if the hero didn't get the girl or vice versa?

I know, I know. If the story doesn't end with the guy getting the girl, it wouldn't be that happy picture book ending. The story wouldn't touch the sensitive side of our heart and soul. After being ingrained so deeply, the story would no longer seem complete.

Consider what society would think of those single heroes: Single and beyond society's norms. Loners skirting the edges of society and shunned by those who belong. Outsiders. Amongst us but somehow not the same.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the story should end that way and force us to wonder. To wonder if there will be a happily ever after. If Prince Charming decided to toss out the glass slipper and hold another ball in the hopes that Cinderella would appear once more.

Imagine then what could happen! If a story ended and allowed each of us to imagine how it should end. Instead of being able to predict after twenty minutes into the story that the same old outcome was pretty much guaranteed. Why check our imagination at the door?