I think John Green's sole purpose in life is to tear my soul apart and then almost put it back together. He always almost makes it better, but then he doesn't.
I think that's why I appreciate his books so much, though. He writes about real life. And I know people read to get away from reality-- to escape real life. But I think that people need to write about reality. We shouldn't write fantastical stories with happy ending because they don't happen. And I think it would become very dangerous for people to believe the world is more than it really is-- happier than it really is.
Because once you believe the world is happy, you expect happiness. And in the least cynical way possible, hardly anyone achieves happiness. We just get our hopes up and then the fall is that much further. Getting your hopes up hurts more than having low expectations in the same way that unrequited love is so much more survivable than once requited love. When your expectations are low, or your love is unrequited, or really when any form of ignorance occurs, you can still let yourself believe. You can lie to yourself. "Oh, life would be better if I tried harder." "Maybe if I had told them I loved them, taken a chance, they would've loved me back." These things we tell ourselves are hardly true, but believing them makes the world a much kinder place.
In short, while false hope may diminish life's wondrous opportunities, attaining true happiness can be such a risk.
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