Find a Good
Frog
http://thisibelieve.org/essay/101469/
I believe in finding a good frog. It seems that all throughout childhood,
we are taught to look for a happily ever after. “And they all lived happily
ever after”; isn’t that the conclusion to many children’s films? When I was a
kid I always thought of that as magical; but now really it just seems
unrealistic. And it teaches us that what we want is a fairytale like they have in
the storybooks. We all want to be Cinderella who gets swept off her feet by the
hot prince; we want to live in the royal castle, right? But I don’t think
that’s necessarily a good thing for us to seek. Now I’m not saying I believe in
being pessimistic, but I do believe in being realistic; it’s something I got
from my mom.
My mother and I always have our best conversations in the rain. We sit in
the car, neither of us wanting to brave the rain to get to the house. So we
sit. We watch droplets race down the windshield, listen to the rain strike the
roof of her little blue Honda, and feel the heater on full-blast rushing at our
feet (just the way we like it). I don’t know why, but sitting in the car, we
always talk more than normal. There was one rainy day when my mom told me
something that is going to stick with me forever. Earlier that day she and my
dad had been arguing about something; I can’t remember what. So she said,
“Don’t spend your life looking for Prince Charming. Instead, find yourself a
really good frog.” At the time, I found this thought really disheartening. Who
wants to think that you’ll never find Prince Charming? You’ll never get to be
Cinderella? Another thought that struck my mind: if my mom says there’s no
Prince Charming, then what’s my dad? A frog? I asked her, and she replied with,
“Of course! If he were Prince Charming, he wouldn’t snore, would be able to
cook, and we would never argue. But you know what? He’s a damn good frog.” Of
course, being young, I didn’t think of the meaning behind what she was saying.
I was too busy thinking of it literally, visualizing my mom as a princess and
my dad in frog form.
But a few years later, I understand the value of my mom’s words. You can’t
expect everything to be perfect. Let’s be completely honest; if you wait your
whole life for your prince with flowing hair, statuesque features, and a white
horse, you’re going to be lonely. I think that the point of finding a good frog
is you accept something that’s great, flaws and all. It’s so easy to be picky.
You can find the one tiny thing that’s wrong, and that one tiny thing is what
you can’t get your mind off of. But in life, we can’t afford to wait years in
vain for perfection. So I think that a good frog, an amazing frog, the best
frog you can find is what we’re really looking for in this world. Don’t laze
through life waiting for a happily ever after, because I don’t think you’ll be
very happy with the outcome.
This I believe.