David McElroy

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.

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Alice Hathaway Lee was only 17 years old when she met Teddy Roosevelt in 1878. The future U.S. president was a student at Harvard University. Roosevelt was a classmate of Lee’s cousin and it was at their house they met.

As soon as Roosevelt met Alice, he wrote of her constantly in his diary. He was smitten with her. He found her beautiful and charming. He was so obsessed with Alice that he wrote of her all the time. He chronicled her acts of recognition of him, her quiet smiles, her silences — every action he saw her take, as though he never wanted to forget the slightest detail.

Eight months later, Roosevelt proposed marriage, but Alice was in no hurry. She made him wait eight more months before she agreed and the wedding was later that year.

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When did you stop believing in fairy tales?

You might say you never really believed such stories. Maybe you knew Snow White and Cinderella and the rest were impossibly unreal. Maybe you never even believed in Santa. Even if you’re among those who never believed — who always recognized a delightful fantasy instead — I’m certain you’ve believed other fairy tales.

In fact, you almost certainly believe fantastic fairy tales today. I probably still believe in some of my own. But I’ve been thinking today that we might need such illusions in order to survive — as individuals and as civil societies.

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