It almost seemed as if there must be some random and of course unfair thrift in the emotional housekeeping of the world, if the great happiness--however temporary, however flimsy--of one person could come out of the great unhappiness of another.

Alice Munro
About This Quote

When you feel like life has dealt you a bad hand, it’s easy to sit back and give up. It almost seems that you must be the victim of some random act of unfairness. And, if that were true, then you really would be at the mercy of the world around you. But, as William Wordsworth says in the poem, "Tintern Abbey," it is not true.

If our emotions are “housekeeping” for the world, then there has to be some kind of order to it. There must be something fair about our emotional housekeeping because otherwise we would expect things like happiness to depend on sadness and sadness to depend on happiness. And, whatever the case may be, it doesn’t have to be random or unfair.

Source: Too Much Happiness

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