Geoff Lye, a British environmental consultant, once told me that after the sudden and premature death of his friend and colleague David Watson, he wo… - Oliver Burkeman

Ultimately, what defines the ‘cult of optimism’ and the culture of positive thinking – even in its most mystically tinged, New Age forms – is that it abhors a mystery. It seeks to make things certain, to make happiness permanent and final. And yet this kind of happiness – even if you do manage to achieve it – is shallow and unsatisfying. The greatest benefit of negative capability — the true power of negative thinking — is that it lets the mystery back in.

mortality makes it impossible to ignore the absurdity of living solely for the future.

as the journalist Anne Helen Petersen writes in a widely shared essay on millennial burnout, you can't fix such problems "with vacation, or an adult coloring book, or 'anxiety baking,' or the Pomodoro Technique, or overnight fucking oats."