I rarely read essays that I know to be in my top five of all time, but I just read one.
I’ll include a funny quote from it here that’s rather unrelated to the content, but I encourage you to read the entire thing:
This assumption actually has a name: the “Coolidge Effect,” named after the 30th president of the United States. The story (probably apocryphal) begins with Silent Cal and Mrs. Coolidge touring a poultry farm. The first lady noticed that there were very few roosters, and asked how so many eggs could be fertilized. The farmer told her that the virile roosters did their jobs over and over again each day. “Perhaps you could point that out to Mr. Coolidge,” she told him. The president, hearing the remark, asked whether the rooster serviced the same hen each time. No, the farmer told him — there were many hens for each rooster. “Perhaps you could point that out to Mrs. Coolidge,” said the president.
As I said, the quote isn’t really related to the topic, which is about happiness, and how people go about not achieving it. Trust me, just read it.
It’s wonderful.
