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blue bits. red rocks.
Saturday 28 November 2009

In his recent book, Stumbling on Happiness, Dan Gilbert cleverly and comically argues that we spend much time trying to provide for our future selves the things that we think they will want, only to find our future selves ungrateful and disappointed. On the flip side, we end up happy with things we never thought we wanted. As adolescents, we may have shuddered at the thought of ending up as ordinary, boring adults. When we become ordinary, boring adults, those ordinary, boring things like buying a house and having children are milestones more meaningful than our adolescent selves with their limited vision could have imagined. I’m not sure I want total control over my future. If we really could plan our future lives for our future selves, this would gut our lives’ journeys of the experiences that make us grow and develop as people. The Law of Attraction: Science, Faith, and the Cult of Positive Thought

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