We've taken some L's lately when it comes to losing celebrities.

Tim Curry passed away. I never got into The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I get is practically a personality type for some people and I respect that. But Tim Curry in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was an absolute scene stealer. The man had a gift for making every scene he walked into feel like it belonged to him and he used it generously for decades.

Here’s some video evidence, in case you need it ;)

Dolly Parton passed away. She deserves to have her photograph next to the definition of icon in the dictionary and her face on the Mount Rushmore of amazing humans. From everything you can learn about her, she was not just extraordinarily talented but genuinely, consistently, stubbornly good. The kind of good that doesn't come from image management, but rather that kind that's just who you are.

And then there was someone whose face most people wouldn't recognize but whose voice, for an entire generation (yes, it’s my generation), is one of the most recognizable sounds of childhood.

Peter Cullen.

If that name doesn't land immediately, let me help. He was the voice of Optimus Prime in Transformers. He was responsible for the terrifying clicks, roars, and vocal effects of the Predator alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose name I had to Google to make sure I spelled correctly. To be fair, I feel like 99% of the population is in the same boat where they can neither pronounce nor spell it correctly. And Peter Cullen was also the voice of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh.

Eeyore. The grey, gloomy, tail-losing, perpetually uninvited raincloud of the Hundred Acre Wood. The donkey who showed up to every party looking like he'd already been asked to leave several others and a founding member of the Mount Rushmore of party poopers.

Peter Cullen gave that donkey a voice for generations of kids who grew up watching him trudge through the rain and somehow feel oddly comforted by it. And since we lost him, I've been thinking about Eeyore more than I had in decades.

When I started learning about happiness, so much of the conversation felt like it was about positivity. Turn that frown upside down. Look on the bright side. Choose joy. And I tried. But after a while it started feeling like wearing a smile that didn't fit. A lot of people I know weren't built for relentless positivity either. It just wasn't their jam. And all that pressure to be positive all the time was, ironically, making everyone feel worse.

Then I read a book called The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman. There's a chapter on stoicism that stopped me cold. And the whole time I was reading it, I remember thinking about Eeyore.

Because Eeyore, it turns out, isn't a party pooper. Eeyore is a stoic.

He demonstrates a quiet resilience that most of the other Hundred Acre Wood residents don't come close to. He accepts hardship without drama. He endures misfortune without catastrophizing. When his house falls down, he doesn't spiral. When nobody remembers his birthday, he doesn't perform devastation. He notes it, accepts it, and keeps going. He's not pretending everything is fine. He's just not making it worse than it already is.

That, as it turns out, is a pretty sophisticated emotional philosophy.

Stoicism isn't pessimism with better PR. It's not about expecting the worst or pretending not to care. It's about accepting reality as it is, including the hard parts, without letting your reaction to it make things harder than they already are. Research on acceptance based approaches to wellbeing consistently shows that accepting negative emotions rather than fighting or suppressing them reduces their intensity and duration. The struggle against feeling bad often makes the feeling worse. Eeyore doesn't struggle. He just feels it and keeps walking.

There's other research on forced positivity that tells the same story from the other direction. Suppressing negative emotions or forcing positive ones increases psychological distress over time. The good vibes only approach doesn't just fail to help. It actively makes things harder by adding a layer of shame around the very normal human experience of having a bad day. And bad days happen.

So… stoicism, and Eeyore, suggest a different way. Feel it. Don't dramatize it. Keep going.

The happiness worth believing in isn't the relentless, performative, turn-that-frown-upside-down variety. It's something quieter and sturdier than that. It has room for grey days and lost tails and birthdays nobody remembered. It doesn't require you to pretend. And honestly, it looks a lot more like a small grey donkey standing in the rain than a motivational poster.

Rest easy, Eeyore. And rest easy, Peter Cullen, for giving him a voice that the rest of us will carry around in our heads for the rest of our lives.

Here's your one thing for this week.

The next time you have a bad day, instead of fighting it or performing your way through it, tap into your inner Eeyore. Name it. Don't make it bigger than it is. And keep walking.

That's the whole philosophy.

I brought this one up last week but, in case you missed last week’s newsletter, we’ll let it ride for another week.

If anxiety has been showing up loudly in your life lately (or forever), this might be exactly what you need.

On September 15th at 7pm London time (I can’t do the math to tell you your local time, but you get the recording if you attend), psychologist, author and BBC broadcaster Dr Sian Williams is hosting a live online event called Living Well With Anxiety, presented by Action for Happiness. Dr Williams, who works within the NHS supporting people with anxiety, stress and trauma, will share practical and compassionate tools from her book The Power of Anxiety. Rather than treating anxiety as something to fight, she'll show you how to understand it, work with it, and live well alongside it.

It's one hour, it's online, and it sounds genuinely worth your time if anxiety has been a traveling companion you'd like to understand a little better.

It’s free, or you can make a $10 donation to an awesome organization called Action for Happiness.

That's Volume 074. Here's to Tim Curry stealing every scene he was ever in, Dolly Parton being exactly who she appeared to be, Peter Cullen giving voice to a lot of childhoods, and Eeyore modeling a more honest and sustainable kind of okay than most of us ever manage.

Rest easy, all of you.

Until next time: breathe deep, keep walking, and chill the duck out.

Jason

Stoicism is an ancient philosophy developed by thinkers including Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca, centered on accepting what cannot be controlled and responding to adversity without unnecessary suffering. Research on acceptance based approaches to emotional regulation, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, consistently shows that accepting negative emotions rather than suppressing or fighting them reduces their intensity and duration. Studies on emotional suppression show that forcing positive emotions or suppressing negative ones increases psychological distress over time. Research on toxic positivity shows that cultural pressure to maintain positive affect adds a layer of shame to normal negative emotional experiences, worsening overall wellbeing. Oliver Burkeman's book The Antidote explores stoicism and other counter-intuitive approaches to happiness, arguing that the pursuit of positivity often undermines the genuine contentment it promises. Eeyore from A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh demonstrates consistent stoic qualities including acceptance of hardship, lack of dramatic complaint, and quiet resilience in the face of ongoing misfortune.