Personal Blogs

“Every happy ending is a hint of home.”

Longing for the Ending We Were Made For

While searching for a film free of sex, violence, and the occult, we unexpectedly encountered something far rarer: goodness. The Indian film Bajrangi Bhaijaan offered not merely clean entertainment, but a deeply humane story—one that lingers long after the screen goes dark. It tells the story of Pawan, a simple, devout Indian man whose life is upended when he discovers Shahida, a mute Pakistani child, lost and separated from her family. What follows is not a tale of ideology or nationalism, but of costly compassion. Pawan’s journey to reunite Shahida with her parents is perilous, humiliating, and socially dangerous, yet he presses on, guided by conscience rather than fear.

The film’s emotional power culminates in a moment that feels almost sacramental. As Shahida crosses the border and realizes she may never see Pawan again, the impossible happens: she finds her voice. Her cry—his name—breaks through barbed wire, politics, and silence itself. It is a moment of pure joy, a vindication of love, and a reminder that some endings feel “right” in a way that transcends plot. We leave the film satisfied, even grateful. And then the question quietly arrives: why?

Why do such happy endings move us so deeply? Why do we crave them—not only in films like Bajrangi Bhaijaan, but in novels, myths, fairy tales, and the stories we tell our children? Are these endings merely sentimental escapes from a harsh world, or do they reveal something essential about us?

From the very beginning of life, human beings reach for joy. An infant cries until it is held, fed, and comforted. That instinct never disappears; it matures. As adults, we pursue happiness through love, work, creativity, justice, beauty, and faith. Even our appetite for stories reflects this longing. We identify with characters who endure suffering and yearn for resolution because we recognize ourselves in them. Their joy reassures us that happiness—somewhere, somehow—is possible.

Yet lived experience rarely mirrors the structure of a satisfying story. Life often resists resolution. Loss remains unresolved. Justice goes unmet. Illness, betrayal, and grief arrive without warning. If happiness is so fragile and fleeting, why does our longing for it remain so stubbornly persistent?

This tension lies at the heart of the human condition. We are creatures who ache for permanence in a world defined by decay. We desire fulfilment, yet everything we grasp slips through our fingers. C.S. Lewis observed that this mismatch is not accidental. He argued that when we find within ourselves desires that no earthly experience can satisfy, the most reasonable explanation is not that those desires are illusions, but that they were never meant to be fulfilled here. We were made, he suggested, for another world.

This insight resonates deeply across religious traditions, particularly within Christianity. Scripture speaks of a future in which tears are wiped away, death is defeated, and sorrow is no more. In this vision, our longing for happiness is not a weakness or a naïve denial of suffering. It is evidence—a clue embedded in the soul—that we are oriented toward eternity. We want joy because we were designed for it.

Stories like Bajrangi Bhaijaan echo this deeper truth. They remind us, however briefly, of a moral shape to the universe—a sense that love should triumph over hatred, that sacrifice should be rewarded, that brokenness is not the final word. Such stories awaken what Lewis called the longing for the “far-off country,” a place where goodness is not fragile and joy cannot be taken away.

Even stories that end in tragedy participate in this longing. When injustice remains unresolved or suffering goes unanswered, we feel not indifference but protest. We want wrongs to be made right. That dissatisfaction itself points beyond the world as it is toward a world as it ought to be.

Many explanations have been offered for our relentless pursuit of happiness. Evolutionary psychology suggests it aids survival. Classical philosophy elevates happiness as the highest human good. These accounts explain part of the story, but not its depth. They cannot fully account for the aching, almost homesick quality of human longing—the sense that joy is not merely pleasurable, but proper, as though it belongs to us by design.

That longing appears spiritual at its core. It is bound up with love, beauty, creativity, and transcendence—with the sense that we are meant for more than endurance. As Augustine famously wrote, our hearts remain restless until they rest in God. The restlessness itself is revelatory.

Real life seldom offers the tidy resolutions we encounter in films. Yet this does not render our longing foolish. On the contrary, it invites us to view life as a story still unfolding. Just as the darkest chapter in a novel often precedes its resolution, our present suffering may not be meaningless. It may be preparatory.

Whether one accepts the promise of eternity or not, the human hunger for happiness remains undeniable. It shapes our stories, animates our choices, and gives direction to our hope. If Lewis was right, then every truly happy ending is a signpost—pointing beyond itself toward a joy that is not imagined, but promised.

And so we keep searching for happiness; not because we are blind to suffering, but because joy is written into the fabric of our being. Perhaps what we are really seeking is not happiness itself, but its source. For every story, in the end, gestures toward a greater one: a journey from longing to fulfilment, from brokenness to redemption, and from time into eternity.

As Jesus said to the dying thief, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” That promise—quiet, undeserved, and final—may be the truest happy ending of all.

Let’s Escape This Life for a Day

In 1999, I lived for a time in Stavanger, Norway. Most mornings, leaving Randaberg and heading into the city, I stopped at a filling station for a freshly made skolebolle—a school bun. I can still taste the custard, coconut, and sweetness. I miss them still.

Sometimes, in the private cinema of my imagination, I step into a time machine and escape this life for a single day. Don’t tell me you’ve never entertained the thought. One press of a button and I’m in a 17th-century Japanese village, mist curling like silk above the paddies, sandals shuffling across the earth. Another press and I’m wandering an Indian night market, the air alive with cumin and cardamom, the chatter of merchants and buyers weaving a living symphony. Or perhaps I’d go further still—away from humanity altogether—and find myself alone in the Rockies, a bag of skoleboller somehow beamed away while the coffee brewed. I’d pitch my tent beneath a midnight sky brimming with stars and listen to a silence so complete it feels as though the earth itself is holding its breath.

But then the dream fades. I blink, and here I am—back in Scotland on a Saturday evening. Nothing extraordinary. Just reality humming along.

And in those quiet returns, the questions arrive. What’s it all about? Why are we here at all? Are we only a passing arrangement of atoms—chance evolution—replicating ourselves until we vanish? Some are content with that explanation. I’m not. Because the world does not behave as though it’s meaningless.

Think about it. Flowers bloom in colours that surpass function. Birds sing songs more elaborate than survival requires. We, too, hunger for what is unnecessary. We write poetry. We compose music. We fall in love with paintings, with stories, with the way sunlight filters through a late-afternoon window. None of this is needed to stay alive. Yet without it, are we truly living? The unnecessary becomes essential.

And then there’s time. We grow older. Doors begin to close one by one. Torschlusspanik, the Germans call it—the panic of gates shutting as opportunities slip away. Suddenly, we cling to life with a desperation we never knew was in us. Few are ready to say, “Tomorrow is enough.” We bargain for more time, more seasons, more chances. Why? Because something deep within whispers that life ought not to end.

My sister once spoke with an old man who stood weeping at the sight of the countryside. When she asked if he was alright, he said, “I see all this beauty, and I don’t have much longer to live. But I want to stay.” His tears were the language of eternity. He wanted more not because he was greedy, but because he was human.

The writer of Ecclesiastes put it plainly: God has “set eternity in the human heart.” That single thought explains much of our restless longing. It explains why sunsets undo us, why we fear the final curtain, why we ask questions that biology cannot satisfy. It tells us that our hunger for permanence is not a flaw but a clue.

The Garden of Eden was a template for what the whole earth was meant to be. Our first parents were told to spread out and cultivate the land. Imagine it—the whole earth filled with Rockies, Japanese gardens, skoleboller, and the rich delights of every age and culture. And here is the point: with eternity in your lap, there is no need to beam about. There is no hurry. Build a boat, sail to the Orkneys, then to the Faroes, and on to Norway. Ride a horse to Stavanger. Kult! as the Norwegians say.

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
— Luke 23:43 (NIV)

Image by Copilot

"“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

Image by https://unsplash.com/@matblueforest

I have an embarrassing  secret. I am happy to tell you what it is so long as you don’t tell anyone. Is that a deal? This is my secret. I love children’s books. At my age I should know better, but it's an addiction . I love them so much that I changed my degree from a Literature Degree to an Open Degree to accommodate EA300 Children’s Literature with The Open University.

Gyo Fujikawa is the most addictive for me. Children in paradise. Waving from tree houses. Gentle fairies and children no bigger than polka-dot toadstools. Captivating. But, there's the loneliness of the child with no one to play with except a frog. That saddens me. I was a lonely child and I empathise. 

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-gyo-fujikawa-drew-freedom-in-childrens-books

Then there’s Astrid Lindgren’s The Children of Noisy Village. I’m a Swedophile who can speak a few words of Swedish and I am in awe of the beauty and setting where the tale is filmed. An age of innocence. Swedish village life that will never return, perhaps.

https://tv.apple.com/no/movie/the-children-of-noisy-village/umc.cmc.13bmjs0xgg1sv8sju2tv3za5j

There’s the Portuguese word that best explains my longing to enter a world that these stories encapsulate, Saudade,  a longing or nostalgia for something that cannot be realised.

I guess the reason such stories appeal is the desire to escape mentally from this broken world. C.S. Lewis wrote:

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

Interesting, but what world did C.S Lewis mean? Did he mean the world of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? No, he was a Christian and an academic who wrote children’s books, Christian, apologetic and academic books. The world he was thinking of was the world recorded in Luke 23:43 “Truly I say to you today, you will be with Me in Paradise.”

Writing:  © 2024 Jim McCrory