Optimism

People become more interesting when they become interested in why they're crazy. Depressive realism is an attractive idea. "It's going to take a long time" would be better understood as, "That it has the potential to take a long time demands appropriate patience." I haven't read Candide, but in it, Pangloss says "Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable." It may be necessary constantly to revue accurately one's history in order to fully understand and contextualize one's present emotional state.