During my hour-long commute home from work, when I’m too tired to even listen to podcasts, I listen to music. More often than might be healthy, I listen to Lana Del Rey, as she cycles through her doomy refrains about how her life is over, she’s filled with poison, she’s running like mad to heaven’s door. With their frothy melodrama, Lana’s songs tend to match my postwork mood so precisely that it doesn’t feel like listening at all. I don’t have to concentrate or pull myself in.

Some people believe that to enjoy life, they need to do things like:

• Earn more money
• Have the perfect relationship or friends
• Become well-respected or famous

However, plenty of people have these things and more and are still unhappy.

The Vietnamese mon...