Reasons To Be Cheerful Theodore Dalrymple on the joy of seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary — in gooseberries, for example, even in human beingsIn my line of work, it is rather hard to think of reasons to be cheerful. On the contrary, it requires quite a lot of concentrated intellectual effort: one has the sensation of scraping the bottom of one’s skull for thoughts that just aren’t there. Of course, since lamentation about the state of the world is one of life’s unfailing pleasures, the world is a greater source of satisfaction than ever. Another consolation is that most...