Worst time of the year

Worst time of the year: Christmas and birthdays (well my birthday in particular)! Now I know that this makes me sound like a scrooge, but my reasons for this go beyond just a hate of human contact. As a matter of fact, I love human contact and being around people. I think that you never live more fully than when you are surrounded by people that you love and who love you. But what I hate about humans is that most of the time they're disappointing (and this even when you only have basic expectations). That's the problem! When you get close to people you start having expectations and as Barry Schwartz explained (see earlier post) expectations are the start of unhappiness and you end up being disappointed 90% of the time. This is particularly obvious around Christmas and birthdays because they're supposed to be special occasions and that has an effect of raising expectations. So the only thing that these occasions end up doing is giving you a wake up call and a very cold reality check.