In a post called "The Powerlessness of Positive Thinking," Adam Alter describes social science research indicating that your mom and your second grade teacher and all the self-help authors are wrong about the favorable effects of a sunny disposition. "Ceaseless optimism about the future," it turns out, "only makes for greater shock when things go wrong; by fighting to maintain only positive beliefs about the future, the positive thinker ends up being less prepared, and more acutely distressed, when things eventually happen that he can't persuade himself to believe are good."
Aha! We melancholics are the Einsteins of the happiness project, blandly advancing crazy theories and then waiting patiently for the experimentalists to explain to everyone that, actually, we're right.
Here is a poem that Thomas Hardy wrote when he was 86:
Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
Much as you said you were.
Since as a child I used to lie
Upon the leaze and watch the sky,
Never, I own, expected I
That life would all be fair.
"Twas then you said, and since have said,
Times since have said,
In that mysterious voice you shed
From clouds and hills around:
"Many have loved me desperately,
Many with smooth serenity,
While some have shown contempt of me
Till they dropped underground.
"I do not promise overmuch,
Child, overmuch;
Just neutral-tinted haps and such,"
You said to minds like mine.
Wise warning for your credit's sake!
Which I for one failed not to take,
And hence could stem such strain and ache
As each year might assign.
He gave it the title, "He Never Expected Much."