HE reply: Outside of the super-wealthy, the blissfully ignorant and the simply-lacking-sufficient-brain-cells crowd, life itself is a kind of misery index. If you’re living an examined one, I mean.

That old Annie Hall joke about human experience being categorized by the horrible for some (afflicted with ghastly disease, suffering in concentration camps) and the miserable for everyone else? It got a big laugh when I first saw Woody Allen’s classic film in the spring of ‘77.

Life is occasionally punctuated with deeply satisfying accomplishment breathers or mountain-peak highs or blissful peace-outs (family dinners, silent communings with nature, pet affection, great music, early-morning airport arrivals in Europe) or fizzy champagne cocktail moments (and who doesn’t love these?) but otherwise is mostly about pushing the plow through rocky soil and slogging through as best we can. I wish it were otherwise, but then again misery and anxiety and sore shoulder muscles build character.