"The Happiness Culture doesn't help"

"Listen, I am not into pain for its own sake. (...) And like everyone else, it is easier for one horrid thing in the day to knock me over, rather than for 3 nice things in the day to have the same kind of impact.
But maybe that is because the horrid things act like a sponge for all the pressed down upsets that we can't look at – and if we could look at them and live with them a little bit more, maybe the knocks of the day wouldn't be so hard, because they wouldn't be attracting the other stuff buried in there.
For myself, I hate feeling dreadful feelings. As a solution-based person I am always asking myself ‘What can I do about X?’ But that isn't the right question – not straight away – not for the real stuff. Sitting with feeling is just awful, but it does help the feeling to form, and then it helps us to understand it.
Later, there will have to be a solution. But a solution too early just seals in the problem at a deeper level."

Jeanette Winterson

[read the whole article here]