Because we believe happiness to be an important achievement, unhappiness is a sign of failure.
Because we believe happiness to be attainable by strong, self-reliant, hard-working, and virtuous people, we believe that unhappy people are weak, dependent, lazy, and morally flawed.
Because we believe happiness to be both desirable and achievable, we question whether unhappy people actually want to be happy. Because happiness is such a defining cultural value, those who appear not to want it are alien to us.
So unhappy people are morally bankrupt foreigners who are failures at life. No wonder we have a hard time accepting people who are experiencing unhappiness, even if those people are ourselves. But just because it's understandable doesn't mean it's adaptive or healthy. Let's by all means pursue happiness – but let's not let our love of happiness make us miserable.
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