The Emotional Spectrum.

It seems like there are some people out there who just can't be happy. Even at their peak emotional highs, they can't just enjoy the moment. They instead think about the fact that their happy moment has to end. Why can't they just be happy?

Let's say we were going to graph a person's emotional range on an absolute scale. Over an arbitrary duration, a person with a "normal" range of emotions might have a chart that looks something like this (with a little help from the Google Charts API):

Our Sulky Person is one who is never truly happy, and therefore can't experience Absolute Happiness (Ecstatic, on this scale) because it falls outside of their emotional range:

At her absolute peak of happiness, our Sulky Person might still feel only Neutral on the absolute scale. I feel like I'm the opposite of this case: I tend to be happy and laid back almost all the time. Even when I have been at the deepest depths of my despair, I could still feel a little seed of happiness inside. [This part is not theoretical...I remember the exact moment....but that's a story for another time :-) ]

This is not to brag -- in either case, both me and the Sulky Person are missing out on experiencing the full range of emotions. Someone with the full range would be able to feel both crushing, suicidal despair and triumphant, ebullient ecstacy with an equal intensity. Let's say, for example, Ludvig von Beethoven: