I’ve said many times on this blog that self-deception is essential to living The Good Life.
In his review of the hot new book Stumbling on Happiness (one of a few books on happiness I will read soon…even though it’s only one of 168 books in my Amazon wishlist), Scott Sossell says:
For instance, healthy people can be deluded into greater happiness when granted the mere illusion of control over their environment; the clinically depressed recognize the illusion for what it is. All in all, it’s yet more evidence that unhappy people have the more accurate view of reality — and that learning how to kid ourselves may be a key to mental health.
Blithe optimism is one of the things that makes me so endearing!
The universe surrounding us is infinite. Within that domain there is always a subset area of our control and a subset area outside our control. Happy people center on the first, unhappy people focus on the second. Nobody can focus on them all.