The Bard said everything best, of course, and he’s making my point here but he’s making it hyperbolically: ”‘Tis nothing good or bad / “ It’s nice poetry, but that can’t exactly be right. Is there really nothing good or bad? Is it really the case that gall bladder surgery and a trip to Paris are just the same thing? That seems like a one-question IQ test. They can’t be exactly the same.
In more turgid prose, but closer to the truth, was the father of modern capitalism, Adam Smith, and he said this. This is worth contemplating: ”The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life seems to arise from  between one permanent situation and another … Some of these situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others, but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardor which drives us to either of prudence or of justice, or to corrupt the future tranquility of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by of our own injustice.” In other words: yes, some things are better than others.
We should have preferences that lead us into one future over another. But when those preferences drive us too hard and too fast because we have overrated the difference between these futures, we are at risk. When our , it leads us to work joyfully. When our ambition is unbounded, it leads us to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value. When our fears are bounded,  , we’re cautious, we’re thoughtful. When our fears are unbounded and overblown, we’re reckless, and we’re cowardly.
The lesson I want to leave you with from these data is that our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown, because we have within us the the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience.
Thank you.