Attachment, this argument runs, is the only thing that motivates anyone to accomplish anything worthwhile in the first place. If you weren’t attached to things being a certain way, rather than another way – and to feeling certain emotions, rather than others – why would you ever attempt to thrive professionally, to better your material circumstances, to raise children, or to change the world?

Is it other people that bother me? Or the judgment I make about other people?”.

What actually causes suffering are the beliefs you hold about those things.

Ultimately, what defines the ‘cult of optimism’ and the culture of positive thinking – even in its most mystically tinged, New Age forms – is that it abhors a mystery. It seeks to make things certain, to make happiness permanent and final. And yet this kind of happiness – even if you do manage to achieve it – is shallow and unsatisfying. The greatest benefit of negative capability – the true power of negative thinking – is that it lets the mystery back in.

Resisting a task is usually a sign that it’s meaningful-which is why it’s awakening your fears and stimulating procrastination. You could adopt “Do whatever you’re resisting the most” as a philosophy of life.

Pain is inevitable, from this perspective, but suffering is an optional extra, resulting from our attachments, which represent our attempt to try to deny the unavoidable truth that everything is impermanent.

It is alarming to consider how many major life decisions we take primarily in order to minimise present-moment emotional discomfort.

Uncertainty is where things happen.

Bereaved people who make the most effort to avoid feeling grief, research suggests, take the longest to recover from their loss.

Ask yourself whether you are happy’, observed the philosopher John Stuart Mill, ‘and you cease to be so.’ At best, it would appear, happiness can only be glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, not stared at directly.