Cheerfulness Is Largely Elective: We Choose It; We Can Manage It - Deepstash

Cheerfulness Is Largely Elective: We Choose It; We Can Manage It

Perhaps it is because of the modesty of cheerfulness that philosophers have largely overlooked it. They tend to focus on more dramatic emotions such as anger and melancholy, viewing human emotional life as a battleground of unconscious drives or overwhelming passions. The classic example of the man ruled by passion is the Greek hero Achilles. Overcome by his wrath toward Agamemnon, Achilles refused to join his fellow Greeks in the war against Troy, thereby betraying his own duty as Greece’s greatest warrior. Unlike wrath, cheerfulness is largely elective. We can manage it.

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“An idea is something that won’t work unless you do.” - Thomas A. Edison

A cheery mood, we might think, is a terribly self-absorbed response to serious times. But history tells us otherwise.

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