Counter-intuitive as it may sound, one (among the many) key to happiness is morbid fascination with second-hand misery. I have stumbled upon this conclusion by experience. I could rattle off countless quotes like ‘It takes sadness to know happiness’, or ‘hunger is the best condiment’, etc…

Morgan in his popular book “The Psychology of Money” talks about a similar phenomenon where pessimism rules supreme over optimism. It garners more interest and is a fvourite to our short attention span. Optimism is a long term thing. He borrows excerpts from Kahnman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”. I suggest you read both of these as my articulation isnt half of what it should be to describe these wonders. Now back to my point, Morbid Fascination. It captivates us like nothing else. We secretly wish for the doom and the apocalypse. For fantisizing over it resets our expectations and benefits us in the realization that things are not so bad, for you have already imagined it could be much worse !