“Those who prefer their principles over their happiness,” Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) wrote in his notebook toward the end of his life, “they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness.” Indeed, our principles tend to harden into habits and although habits give shape to our inner lives,
they can mutate into the rigidity of routine and create a kind of
momentum that, rather than expanding our capacity for happiness,
contracts it. In the trance of routine and principled productivity, we
end up showing up for our daily lives while being absent from them.
-Brain Pickings
