Time & Perspective Quote by J. Donald Walters

Walters is quietly picking a fight with the Western plotline that treats happiness like a trophy: endure the misery, grind through the gauntlet, then earn the shining finale. By calling that model a "brilliant climax", he borrows the language of theater and achievement to expose how staged it is - a narrative we import from career ladders, self-help arcs, even prestige TV. The jab lands because it recognizes a common emotional con: when life doesn't deliver the promised crescendo, we assume we failed, not that the script was rigged.

His alternative is deliberately unglamorous: happiness as "a long succession of little decisions". That phrasing does two things at once. It democratizes happiness (no special access required) and it burdens you with agency (no one else can hand it to you). The subtext is almost corrective: if you're waiting for circumstances to absolve you into joy, you're outsourcing your inner life to luck.

Context matters here. Walters, a spiritual writer tied to yogic traditions, is translating contemplative practice into plain language for a modern reader trained to fetishize outcomes. "Simply to be happy in the moment" is less a pep talk than a discipline: attention, reframing, choosing gratitude over rumination, choosing presence over rehearsal. The line flirts with being misread as "just decide" optimism, but the earlier clause about "grim struggle and anxiety" signals he isn't naive about suffering. He's arguing that struggle doesn't automatically cash out into happiness - and that waiting for it to is one more way anxiety keeps you on the leash.