Your sweet spot is in between the true believers and the scoffing skeptics.

We're not going to waste our valuable space or your precious energy by giving equal time to stories of tragedy, failure, and tumult. They get far more that their fair share of attention everywhere else. Future historians might even conclude that our age suffered from a collective obsessive-compulsive disorder: the pathological need to repetitively seek out reasons for how bad life is.

The 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Bore God. The 12th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Bore Thyself.

Assume that your drive to experience pleasure isn't a barrier to your spiritual growth, but is in fact essential to it. Proceed on the hypothesis that cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate person. Imagine that feeling good has something important to teach you every day. What might you do differently from what you do now?

Here's what I say: We will ignore the cult of doom and gloom and embrace the cause of zoom and boom. We will laugh at the stupidity of evil and hate, and summon the brilliance of praise and create. . . Life is crazily in love with us-wildly and innocently in love with us. The universe always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.

You have to learn how to stay in a good mood as you overthrow the sour, puckered hallucination that is mistakenly referred to as reality.

BLASPHEMOUS REVERENCE. Acting on the knowledge that the most efficacious form or devotion to the Divine Wow is tinctured with playful or mischievous behavior that prevents the buildup of fanaticism.