Marcel PagnolThe reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.
About This Quote
In this quote from the movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, author Douglas Adams gives a very accurate assessment of how people view their past, present, and future. In our minds, we tend to see the past as a time when everything was better than it is today. We see the present as a time when everything is worse than it was in the past. And we only focus on the future when we think there will be a worse time than what is going on now.
This is because we have set ourselves up for failure by looking at times that didn’t work out well and through our minds, we project that bad future into our present. We can still think of ways to change things around and make them better, but that requires changing our mindset from one that looks at all bad things that could happen into one that says, “There are many possibilities in every situation, and I am open to discovering all of them.”
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