The sun has set on another year — and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
It seems as though I feel this way every year. At least for the last decade or so. I start each year with unreasonable hope that this year will be different. I keep hoping this year will be the one when some of the things I need start to come true.
A few years ago, I heard an interview with Harvard University psychologist Dan Gilbert in which he explained that people are terrible at predicting their own futures. In the abstract, people will tell you they know bad things can happen just as easily as good things.
But Gilbert said a consistent pattern shows up when you ask people to predict things in their own futures. If you take all their predictions and group them into a positive pile and a negative pile, the positives they predict for themselves far outweigh the negatives. They simply can’t see that bad things are going to happen.
Goodbye, Daddy
Unjustified panic: Why are you so scared of all the wrong things?
‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’
‘What’s the worth of one warm smile? Go and ask the dead man’
Each experience of beauty and love stands alone, different from the rest
Rational rules don’t apply when the state gives itself a monopoly
Past feels like blurry watercolor, not like the history of real people
What does a man confess about himself when he wants a ‘slut’?
The goals we chase can become chains that hold us in bondage