Source of Unhappiness

---

The first time I read Crime & Punishment as a young teen, my soul was pierced. I remember paradoxically crying tears of sadness and joy. Dostoevsky, like Shakespeare, captured the human condition with such delicately penetrating poignancy. They knew the source of unhappiness.

I used to believe that unhappiness resulted from a disconnect between what “I had” in my life and what “I wanted”. Eventually I realized that I had totally reversed cause and effect. The source of my happiness (or lack thereof) wasn’t caused by the goings-on in the world. Rather, my experiences in the world directly flowed from a choice in my mind. Once I made that shift, everything changed.

—