A short fairy story as served up by Mark Twain...

https://jackshalom.net/2018/12/04/the-five-boons-of-life/

"Here are gifts. Take one, leave the others. And be wary, chose wisely; oh, choose wisely! for only one of them is valuable."

The gifts were five ministries : Love, Peace, Plenty, Truth, and Death. The youth said, eagerly:

"There is no need to consider..."

Morale of the story: Beware of faeries bearing gifts

I found this very interesting.

I was very 'optimistic' in my younger years and have become much less so in the later.

Twain had a lot of disappointments in his later life; I don't know when this story was written, but it feels like hard won knowledge about life.
.

That's an odd form of hindsight. Avoid pleasure because it is fleeting, avoid love because it will torment you, avoid fame because it rhymes with shame, avoid riches because impoverish people will feel sad, and instead embrace death, but no... the good faerie used it to snuff a kid instead.

... so there's that.

Excruciating. I sat in my truck and made it to the end without commiting suicide and I still don’t know what happened.

Oh, the production was fine but the good faerie was trying to force death like a punter with a new trick failing with a 'free choice'...

The message was just a bit heavy handed.

That's not a nice fairy to offer gifts of pain, suffering, want, loneliness and something we all get eventually.
.. now if they offered health, sanity, wisdom, compassion and a better excuse...

She may be the only Tinkerbell in town. And even she can't escape.

It's a bitter tale, but compare to Shakespeare's Ages of Man speech which ends "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything."

I think this interpretation misses the intended humour .

“It's a bitter tale”
Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.

Twain had likely read Gulliver's Travels - and so would recall the immortals of Luggnagg.

Choose for me? ?!?

Nice connection for those fellows who share a November 30 birthday.

I was also reminded of Ecclesiastes I.

Remember now thy Creator?

Https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Ecclesiastes-Chapter-1/

2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity...

14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

15 That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

16 I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

17 And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.