The Fear of Being Happy
The Fear of Being Happy Read this essay as originally published at Watermark.com Recently, I was out to dinner with some friends, sitting at the bar of our favorite local restaurant, sipping happy hour martinis and munching on brick-baked pizza. We were acting silly, loving life, and enjoying each others’ company. Even in the tumult since the election, and even though we range, politically, from Trumpers to ultra-Pinkos, we find our common ground in love and affection. On this night, our cheers were interrupted by a wet towel from down the bar, repeating the “wah-wahhh” refrain of a muted trombone that she clearly had been playing to much sympathetic reaction since November: “We are all going to die. He’s going to kill us all. America is over.” I, ever the radical centrist, shouldn’t have engaged. I should have let the irrational shot across the bar land on deaf ears; I couldn’t. “Look, I didn’t vote for him. I think he’s a rotten person, a narcissist, and has some really bad...
