https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -good-life
... You can make resolutions that seem plausible – until they are fully tested. In the article I wrote two months ago, before my surgery, I mentioned the three principles that, I felt, were essential to happiness: imagine how much worse it could be, rather than how much better; change what you can change, accept what you can’t; and do not let fear rule your life. ...
So did they work, or did I abandon them and freak out?
I felt not only that those three principles had been vindicated, but that they could be assimilated into a broader rule, namely: the state of being for which we should strive is to be attached to life without being possessive of it. We should seek to love our lives and live fully, but not to extend them indefinitely. ...
while attachment seems vital – in both senses of this word – liberating myself from the urge to possess has proved an astonishing antidote to fear and tension.
Kim