Feelin' blue? Here, this'll cheer you right up.
Picture yourself laying on the cool grass... as it soaks up the arterial blood pouring out of a massive chest wound. Then picture the expression on your face: a rictus of disbelief, now going pale and slack as your head flops to the side, the light already fading from your eyes, a final dullness glazing over them. Good. Finally, imagine your recently buried body, swollen in your funeral clothes from the gases given off by decomposition, and then decades later, moldering and sloughing apart in its rotting box, a box which, with each passing day, marks an evermore pointless distinction between its contents and the damp dirt outside.
I'll bet that frown's turned upside down already! And so do the authors of a recent study in Psychological Science, who claim that contemplating oblivion activates our unconscious mental defense mechanisms -- in essence, taking us to our "happy place" without us even knowing it.
Continue reading 'Thinking about your own death boosts your mood' >
