everything i know about life, i learned from a chick flick

Okay. Maybe that makes me a total sap. A hopeless romantic. Whatever. I was watching "Never Been Kissed" today on TV (by the way, if you haven't seen it, you should), and I was thinking about this. You are the star of your own life. No matter what happens, no matter what anyone says, you run the show. Sure, you can fall back and act like a secondary character (Lord knows, I've done that more times than I'd like to admit) but ultimately, you have the ability to call the shots. To become the best possible version of yourself.

In any good chick flick, the happy ending does not come easily, however. There will always be forces working against you, be it a person, a stressful situation, a troublesome relationship, what have you. You have two options. 1) Let it control you, and possibly lose a little bit of yourself in the process; or, 2) like those beautiful women in the movies, rise above your circumstances. We all have humiliating/sad/troubled pasts. I know I would not be the same without mine. But never, ever let the past rule your life... you can overcome it. People don't just happen into their happy endings, they must work for them. Life is all about choices.

Also, just to clear up any misconceptions about chick flicks, Mr. Right does not exist. At least, not generally speaking. There is only such a thing as Mr. Right-for-you. And chances are, he isn't an underwear model in his spare time, or some world-famous rock star. Often, he is the last person you'd expect to knock you off your feet. And you will never know when he is going to enter your story. Maybe it's two years from now, maybe it's tomorrow, or maybe it was 15 years ago on a playground somewhere. But the important thing is that you stop looking. He's not going to find you any faster if you obsess about it. So let your story unfold, and stop trying to rush things.

Most importantly, you are in control of your own happiness. You need to be happy with yourself before you can truly be happy with someone else. Like all things in life, happiness is a choice we must make. There are millionaires in the world with every material thing they could want, and still they are not fully happy. And there are people living in complete poverty, surrounded by death and destruction, who have lost nearly everything, and they still get out of bed in the morning. They find reasons to smile. Because they know something that those millionaires do not. It doesn't matter how much you have... money doesn't make you happy, YOU make you happy. If you are in a bad place in life, do something about it. We must make the best of whatever situation life has dealt us, because otherwise, what is the point? "It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness." Bad things will happen, yes. You will get knocked down sometimes, it's a fact. But if these movies have taught me anything at all, it's that you only fail when you stay down.