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I think I live by looking on the brighter side of things, but perhaps you could say that in the very general sense of life, we all have pretty much the same experience whether we have a positive or negative outlook on things. Maybe we frown at everything that comes our way and curse what terrible luck we have, and maybe we look on the bright side of things and see how this can benefit us - in the long run we've all experienced happiness, sadness, laughter, crying, etc. And I think the people who tend to live with a negative outlook on life are the people who generalize it in their outlook on it. Maybe a stressed out law school student who's pessimistic because he/she knows as soon as their free time is up, it's back to work and more work and more work, but they have the idea that they're just gonna get through this task that is eternally horrible so they can get to the happy part, when they're a successful lawyer, etc. However, I think once you dedicate your mind to thinking in a certain situation, "Alright, I'm just gonna haul ass through this whole thing. Every fiber of its being is gonna be a pain in my ass, but I'm just gonna bite my lip and move through it all," you forbid yourself from enjoying the smaller pleasures of life, and also, it becomes addicting. As you originally said. We look for happiness in one thing, find we don't have enough there, and we go on to something else. Well, if you're continuously searching for happiness and you maintain that mindset until you've found the indefinite source of it - in the crudest but most modern terminology - you're fucked for good. And so I think it's this fascination and obsession some people have with the idea of success and the search for a source of eternal happiness. However, I find that the source for eternal happiness is existence (happiness in small doses for more people than seems fun to admit, but happiness nonetheless).
""Scared is not the right word...I'm frightened of it..."---Love & Death"
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