erleichda

"I'm fine," she said. "I've been kinda tired. You're jumping to conclusions. Besides, unhappiness is natural. I'm not one of those bubbleheads that spend all their time trying to avoid the normal misery of life."

She moved toward the front door, but none too swiftly. He followed.

"Sure and life is a lot o' misery, all right, and death is more misery, yet. Dread, fear, anxiety, guilt, even a bit o' neurosis, are perfectly natural responses to a life that promises such an unacceptable end. The trick is not to take such responses too seriously, not to trivialize your all too short stay in your carton o' flesh by cooperatin' with misery."

"Seems to me," said Priscilla, snapping and unsnapping the collar of her slicker, "that the so-called happy people are the ones who are trivial. Avoiding reality and never thinking about anything important."

"Reality is subjective, and there's an unenlightened tendency in this culture to regard something as 'important' only if 'tis sober and severe. Sure and still you're right about your Cheerful Dumb, only they're not so much happy as lobotomized. But your Gloomy Smart are just as ridiculous. When you're unhappy you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don't think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin' on himself and start payin' attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form o' self-indulgence."

-"Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins