You: Being Beautiful moved on from energy through pain and moods or temperament. They have little quizzes (they said I should be a teacher) and charts as well as truly revolting cartoon drawings of human innards.

They had a list of characteristics that could be personality disorders, if overindulged. Extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability — watch out!

They have lots of very medical things to say about these sources of misery (pain, that is, and bad moods, and disorders), and then they move on to the top source of stress: jobs and finances.

I’ve certainly had both job and financial stress in my lifetime, though right now my only issue is overwork and my collection of extremely predictable and boring growing-business issues (seriously, I know that I’m just like a new parent or a teenager: everyone has exactly the same issues, but it seems much more important and serious when it’s you).

The authors do, in the sections I’m running through so briskly here, suggest that it’s an evolutionary issue. We are designed to make snap decisions and overreact to present stimuli and fail to look toward the future, because we’re physically still adapted for life on the savannas with the saber-toothed cats.

This could be true, I suppose.

I don’t feel that I’d be well adapted for that, myself, but I guess if I lived on the savannas with the saber-toothed cats I’d be dead by now, so it wouldn’t be an issue.