My wife and I met while she was an undergraduate and I was a graduate student. Many of our dates were spent at Denny’s eating French fries and studying to all hours. Even when we went places, we tended to study along the way, with us quizzing one another from flashcards. We got married a week after I received my master’s degree from UCLA and so we lived happily ever after.

What follows the phrase, “and they lived happily ever after,” is, of course, a story in itself. Achieving a goal, having a dream come true, graduating, winning the girl—these are all wonderful things. But then you go to bed and you get up the next morning and the cat is complaining that its dish is empty. Then you discover you forgot to get more shampoo and so you end up washing your hair with bar soap, which is a sliver and you realize you need to get more of that, too.

When you get the dream job, the one you’ve worked your whole life for, you soon discover that it is, in fact, still a job. There’s a joy in looking forward to the dream, a joy in talking about the dream, a joy in celebrating the dream, that in the cold light of day turns into hard work. We all know that life is not the movies, but too often we spend an inordinate amount of time reaching for the fantasy and finding ourselves disappointed with the reality. Real life lacks a sound track, there are funny smells in the house, and you have various bodily functions that must be taken care of, including burping, that are messy and inconvenient and unromantic.

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