‘Security is both a feeling and a reality,’ as Schneier puts it, ‘and they’re not the same.’

War, tyrannies, and injustices of all kinds stand exposed as little but the efforts of insecure egos to fortify themselves: to harden their boundaries, to separate themselves, and to impose upon the rest of the world the thought patterns on which they have come to imagine that their very lives – although, in reality, only their egos – depend.

Ducks bear no grudges. People, with egos, do.

The argument goes as follows: that no matter where you draw the boundary – even if we could agree on a place at which to draw it – you would not really be drawing a boundary in the conventional sense at all. Because (here it comes) the very notion of a boundary line depends on it having two sides. When you think about it, it doesn’t make much sense

Setting out to give your ‘self’ one universal positive rating may in fact be deeply perilous. The problem lies in the fact that you’re getting into the self-rating game at all; implicitly, you’re assuming that you are a single self that can be given a universal grade. When you rate your self highly, you actually create the possibility of rating

Most problems, by definition, involve thoughts about how something might turn out badly in the future, whether in five minutes or in five years, or thoughts about things that happened in the past. It can be curiously difficult to identify any problems that afflict you at this very moment, in the present – and it is always the present.

Instead of seeking ways to solve your problems in the future, it can be illuminating to try asking yourself if you have any problems right now. The answer, unless you’re currently in physical pain, is very likely to be no.

Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.’

Positive thinking is all about identifying with your thoughts, rather than disidentifying from them. And the ‘cult of optimism’ is all about looking forward to a happy or successful future, thereby reinforcing the message that happiness belongs to some other time than now.