The excitement of the summer has more or less subsided. They say “The 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.” This seems accurate. When I think of my accomplishments in first year commerce, they seem to far outweigh the accomplishments in my second year. What I forget was how much more challenging first year was for me, adjusting to the new environment. Second year was indeed less successful but perhaps I had a better time. As for the present, there comes a point where the status quo is taken for granted. This is wrong in principle but perhaps required as a motivating force going forward. And finally, the future is the cornerstone of this equation. The unpredictability of the future is the key to aberrations in happiness. Where your actual experiences do not meet your expectations, it is hard to be happy. It is when actual inflation is less than expected inflation that wages rise faster than revenues, creating unemployment. The key is then to manage expectations. But expectations are hard to manage. It is evolutionary to be optimistic (http://www.economist.com/node/21554506).

A little bit of hope makes you go a little further in achieving your goals. Unfortunately, that sets your future expectations higher than reasonable expectations, which seems to be the underlying message of the quotation. There are many good reasons to be optimistic though. There has never been a better time in history to be alive. This applies to people in (almost) any geography and social economic status. The modern economy, as much as it has been slandered, has lifted almost a billion people out of poverty in the last century. The Rawls criterion that inequality must make the worst person better off has then been satisfied. My friends and I are turning 20 this year which begins the happiest decade in a human's life (it peaks at 26, I believe). So I guess I should be optimistic (but not too much).

Last week(s) in pictures:

I cooked dinner at my place in Richmond Hill. I made chicken and risotto. My mother made the fried rice (it was untouched - the reason I learnt to cook).