Embracing negativity as a technique, in the end, really makes sense only if the happiness you’re aiming for is one that can accommodate negative as well as positive emotions. Awe is all the emotions in one, is like trying to assemble a complex jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing. There’s never any closure in an awe-inspired life, only constant acceptance of the mysteries of life.

This kind of happiness has nothing to do with the easy superficialities of positive thinking— with the grinning insistence on optimisms at all costs, or the demand that success be guaranteed. It involves much more difficulty— and also much more authenticity- than that.

The negative path to happiness, then, is a different kind of path. But it is also a pat to a different kind of destination. Or maybe it makes more sense to say that the path is the destination? “A good traveller has no fixed plans” says the Chinese sage Lao Tzu,”and is not intent upon arriving”. There could be no better way to make the journey.