“There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness,” philosopher
Alain de Botton writes in the opening sentence of the intensely rewarding
How Proust Can Change Your Life (
public library). Among the key culprits in our spiritual doldrums, he argues, are “the deadening effects of habit” — something Kierkegaard had also arrived at a century and a half earlier in contemplating our greatest source of unhappiness. Indeed, although habit may be how we give shape to our lives, it can also lull us into a mindless trance in which we glide across the surface of existence.