As humans, we are problem solvers. This makes sense, because it’s how we have survived as a species, and pretty much taken over the planet in the process.
But it means that we are not at our best when things are going well. Rather, we are at our best when something is wrong, and we need to fix it.
This is likely why the stories that we tell each other revolve around problems. Nobody wants to hear a story where nothing goes wrong. That’s just boring.
But give us a hero and a problem and a race for a solution, and we’re hooked. To find meaning, we need to be working toward something.
This is our great contradiction: We seek happiness, yet it is not exactly happiness that we seek, but the seeking of happiness.