What makes us feel happy or at least comfortable or semi-content about things? Apart from discovering satori or enlightenment, I mean. (I happened to find this realm at age 19 by way of LSD and the Bhagavad Gita.) So what makes us feel reasonably good and assured about things?

In five words, a belief in the future. And if you want to add nine more, the likelihood of a fair amount of sunny days.

Not a belief that a safe and semi-bountiful tomorrow is guaranteed (for that is promised to no one) but knowledge that I’ll have a reasonably fair shot at making good and necessary things happen…an ability to feed the fire and keep the wheels turning and in so doing sample the modest comforts of life (Italian shoes, scrambled eggs and a buttered English muffin, Criterion Blurays, an occasional trip to Rome or Hanoi or Key West) being more or less within reach.

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