Life is ultimately a bit of a disappointment.

But once you accept that, you can get down to enjoying it.

For some people, especially those born into an advantageous situation, life often starts with an expectation of great promise.

For some other people, particularly those born into a less advantageous situation, life may still be seen to have great promise although it may entail doing a bit of striving to achieve it.

People often have high expectations of how their lives are going to pan out and they may feel gravely disappointed if it doesn’t turn out that way.

The problem is that life doesn’t actually owe you anything. We’re not put on this earth to have a good time or to do interesting things. Basically, we are born into a disinterested the world in which the only aim that actually exists is the aim to survive (and maybe to try to reproduce). Achieving satisfaction above and beyond this is definitely a bonus.

Despite what it says in the US Declaration of Independence, happiness is not a human right. The declaration declares that people are endowed with “certain inalienable Rights, that among these Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. The pursuit of happiness may be a right, but the achieving of it probably isn’t.

In our modern hyper-individualistic western world, where self fulfilment is seen as a right, any factor that thwarts fulfilment is seen as abherent and practically a violation of the laws of nature.

It’s hard in the current age of mass communication and entertainment overload to avoid a constant bombardment of images depicting beautiful people leading beautiful lives, eating beautiful food, living in beautiful houses and taking beautiful, exotic holidays. They all seem so incredibly happy that their lives seem like the way things are meant to be, which means that if we ourselves aren’t as happy as they are it must be because we are being deprived of something. Happiness is being stolen from us.