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R omance is like alcohol. It can heal and it can hurt. It can create joy and it can create pain. It’s often responsible for some of the best and some of the worst moments of your life. It can obscure a terrible idea into a brilliant one; it can distort a terrible person into a fate-filled lover. Romance is like alcohol. It invents emotions out of thin air. It can create a mirage of love; it can intoxicate us with an imagined happiness. It can generate anger and jealousy where none is deserved. It can bestow sadness and heartbreak when nothing is lost. Romance is like alcohol. It feels really fucking good. Most of the time. But there’s usually a price to pay as soon as you sober up. Romance is like alcohol in that it captivates us when we’re young. It intoxicates us and convinces us that what we’re experiencing is the only thing that is real, the only thing that matters. As we grow older and gain more experience, we learn to trust this feeling less and less, to unders...

R omance is like alcohol. It can heal and it can hurt. It can create joy and it can create pain. It’s often responsible for some of the best and some of the worst moments of your life. It can obscure a terrible idea into a brilliant one; it can distort a terrible person into a fate-filled lover. Romance is like alcohol. It invents emotions out of thin air. It can create a mirage of love; it can intoxicate us with an imagined happiness. It can generate anger and jealousy where none is deserved. It can bestow sadness and heartbreak when nothing is lost. Romance is like alcohol. It feels really fucking good. Most of the time. But there’s usually a price to pay as soon as you sober up. Romance is like alcohol in that it captivates us when we’re young. It intoxicates us and convinces us that what we’re experiencing is the only thing that is real, the only thing that matters. As we grow older and gain more experience, we learn to trust this feeling less and less, to...

I f you have to try to be cool, you will never be cool. If you have to try to be happy, then you will never be happy. Maybe the problem these days is people are just trying too hard. Happiness, like other emotions, is not something you obtain, but rather something you inhabit. When you’re raging pissed and throwing a socket wrench at the neighbor’s kids, you are not self-conscious about your state of anger. You are not thinking to yourself, “Am I finally angry? Am I doing this right?” No, you’re out for blood. You inhabit and live the anger. You  are  the anger. And then it’s gone. Just as a confident man doesn’t wonder if he’s confident, a happy man does not wonder if he’s happy. He simply is. What this implies is that happiness is not achieved in itself, but rather it is the side effect of a particular set of ongoing life experiences. This gets mixed up a lot, especially since happiness is marketed so much these days as a goal in and of itself. Buy X and be happy. Learn Y an...

I f you have to try to be cool, you will never be cool. If you have to try to be happy, then you will never be happy. Maybe the problem these days is people are just trying too hard. Happiness, like other emotions, is not something you obtain, but rather something you inhabit. When you’re raging pissed and throwing a socket wrench at the neighbor’s kids, you are not self-conscious about your state of anger. You are not thinking to yourself, “Am I finally angry? Am I doing this right?” No, you’re out for blood. You inhabit and live the anger. You  are  the anger. And then it’s gone. Just as a confident man doesn’t wonder if he’s confident, a happy man does not wonder if he’s happy. He simply is. What this implies is that happiness is not achieved in itself, but rather it is the side effect of a particular set of ongoing life experiences. This gets mixed up a lot, especially since happiness is marketed so much these days as a goal in and of itself. Buy X and be happy. Lea...

T here’s a paradox that is stumping psychologists right now and it’s this: Over the past 50 years, despite the standard of living rising dramatically in the western world, happiness has stayed level, while mental illnesses, anxiety disorders, narcissism, and depression have all gone up. When you study marketing, the first thing you learn is that fear sells. If you make a person feel inadequate or inferior, they will shut up and buy something in order to feel better. A capitalist system markets to everyone constantly, therefore it promotes a society where people constantly feel inadequate and inferior. It’s funny, a lot of people who travel to the third-world claim that people are “happier” there. They often follow it up with some banal statement about materialism and how we’d all be so much happier if we knew how to live with less. This is completely wrong. Poor people in developing societies aren’t happier, they’re simply less anxious and less stressed. People in the developing world ...

T here’s a paradox that is stumping psychologists right now and it’s this: Over the past 50 years, despite the standard of living rising dramatically in the western world, happiness has stayed level, while mental illnesses, anxiety disorders, narcissism, and depression have all gone up. When you study marketing, the first thing you learn is that fear sells. If you make a person feel inadequate or inferior, they will shut up and buy something in order to feel better. A capitalist system markets to everyone constantly, therefore it promotes a society where people constantly feel inadequate and inferior. It’s funny, a lot of people who travel to the third-world claim that people are “happier” there. They often follow it up with some banal statement about materialism and how we’d all be so much happier if we knew how to live with less. This is completely wrong. Poor people in developing societies aren’t happier, they’re simply less anxious and less stressed. People in the developing...