Have you ever been to the checkout line at a store and come across a cashier that is just way too happy? And then think to yourself,"This person must be crazy! Nobody is this happy!"
This happened to me one day and my only regret was the failure to ask,
"Why are you so happy? And what is making you this happy?"
In the second installment of the great love story which is Shrek, the green ogre is on a quest to make his wife, Princess Fiona, happy. What has happened up to this point is Shrek and the Princess have been summoned by the King and Queen, who happen to be Fiona's parents, to make their first appearance as husband and wife to the kingdom of Far Far Away and receive a royal blessing.
Upon their initial meeting, the King and Queen are shocked with disappointment that the Prince to whom they expected their daughter to have married is instead a very green, blob type of ogre.
And to make this adventurous story a little more interesting, we find that the fairy godmother is stark raving mad that her son Prince Charming was not the one to marry the Princess and thus stand in line to inherit the throne. So a conflict between the fairy godmother and the royal family emerges as well.
As the royal meeting and dinner together with the King and Queen don't go over so well, Shrek and Fiona have their own little spat. In the middle of the night and in the angst of the day's events, Shrek paces the floor in sleepless disgust. In his anguish he discovers "accidently" Princess Fiona's diary from when she was a little girl. As he begins to read it he notices one common theme throughout: Fiona's desire of growing up and marrying her very own Prince Charming. Naturally the belching, slobbing ogre begins having a guilt complex and has second thoughts of not being good enough for her and asks himself 'is she really happy married to an ogre'.
Shrek, donkey, and puss-n-boots set out for the fairy godmother's castle to break into her potion room to steal a love potion called Happily Ever After. Shrek decides maybe it should be animal tested first and has donkey taste it. Donkey takes a swallow and becomes a great, white stallion. Shrek then takes a swig of the maximum strength potion and becomes a handsome Prince, though not quite as handsome as Prince Charming. And with Shrek being in love with Fiona, naturally Fiona herself turns into a ravishing beauty of a Princess without even swallowing one drop. (that's some magic potion!)
In the end Princess Fiona is overjoyed with the fact that Shrek would go to great lengths to make his Princess happy. They both also realize they are happy with just being who they really are: ogres in love.
Aristotle once said that: Happiness depends upon ourselves.
We are all only as happy as we choose to be. And naturally when everything is going fine in life it's the simple things that can make us happy:
An ice cream cone on a hot summer afternoon
Curling up with a good book by a nice warm fire in the fireplace on a cold winters day
Taking a vacation with the family
It's all there for us but it is by our choice. Now when we are going through a struggle and that joy is missing, what does it take to gain some of that happiness back into our lives?
I remember the first couple of months of 2009 and the economy took a sudden swan dive and people were losing jobs as quick as you could say "mud". But the one thing that didn't change
was our need for laughter. Movie theater sales were booming from a small comedy film called Mall Cop. People were searching for a happy distraction from the struggles of life and that search even exists today, some 13 months later.
A greater release of joy within the ups and downs of life is our praise unto the Lord. God takes delight in our praise and in our happiness and honors those who trust in Him during the hard times:
The man who is right and good will be glad in the Lord and go to Him to be safe. All those whose hearts are right will give Him praise. (Psalm 64:10)
Our joy in the Lord can truly bring us into a state of: Happily Ever After.
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