"How I Met Your Mother" could have easily been titled, "How I Bought This House," "How Uncle Marshall Learned To Make Pancakes" or "How I Designed That Skyscraper." Within this series, what matters is not how Ted Mosby met the mother of his children, to whom he is telling the tale. What matters is all of the events in his life, both good and bad, the people that he has encountered, both girlfriends and horrible bosses, that got him to the point where he is now. It is about how I got here.
It is about how, in the end, everything turned out OK.
Everyone who is watching a sitcom or a movie generally knows that it is going to end happily, that everything will turn out fine. However, this is separate from the show itself. This comes from our collective blasé understanding of how a sitcom works, how a story line works. This is how you knew that all the characters on "Friends" would remain friends, and that no matter what, everyone would always love Raymond.
Yet, it is the millennials, being raised in such a time of utter violence, who are beginning to question this cliche, everything-happens-for-a-reason attitude, who are questioning that the story line of our lives will always be a happily ever after. Growing up in a society in which violence is broadcast daily and shoved in our faces via technology and social media is the very reason why "How I Met Your Mother" is a light in the lives of many millennials.
We see Ted Mosby and the other characters of this show go through the good, the bad and the ugly. We see how not everything happens for a reason, and how some things just happen.
A very blatant example is an episode titled "Right Place, Right Time." In this episode, Ted retraces all of the steps that he took on a day in May 2009. He speaks of all he did that single day that led him to the exact corner that his old girlfriend was standing in: he was stressed, so Robin insisted he "take a break [and] get a bagel;" he didn't start walking toward his usual bagel spot that had given Robin food poisoning the week before; he spent a minute looking at a magazine stand, in order to see a picture of the buff woman Barney had recently seduced. Bumping into Stella on that street corner led him to her husband, which subsequently led him to a job.
Ted tells his children that, out of everything that happened, standing on that street corner "may be the biggest." And from this episode comes Ted's most famous line:
"Never forget that on any day you can step out the front door and your whole life can change forever."
However, we also see times in which, well, things don't always work out the best for Ted. We see him left at the altar. We see him cheat on his girlfriend, and we see seasons of Ted being depressed and alone. This is new for a sitcom, to show the longevity of the emotions provoked by what happens to you in life and the mistakes you make. Yet we are reminded in these moments of sadness and screw ups that he is, after all, telling this story happily to his two children.
Ted Mosby taught me that sometimes life will give things to you. There will be times when everything seems to work out in your favor. And there will be the opposite as well. There will be bad time, bad timing. Your actions have consequences, and yet, with friends by your side and a lot of effort, you will see that everything you go through makes you who you are, makes your life a story to be told.
If I could look back on my own life and see how certain small decisions, conversations and people led to events that shaped who I am as a person, I, much like Ted, would go back and hug every single person that I had encountered who led me to that point. Unfortunately, at that time, I had no idea of the future effect of these moments.
So remember: you can never appreciate your life or the events within it while you are living through them, but some day it will all be one story of how you got there.
Your parents may live in Ohio, New York or Provence, but just remember: you "live in the moment."
