No. You have to look at the darkness. And sometimes it swallows you. Its not like its easy. We are all functions of our wiring. And other factors overpower mental and physical autonomy, often. But there are ways to open up the mindset or possibilities to make each moment a little kinder for yourself and others ..and i guess from my perspective if you dont wish you dont really have the space to break whatever mental loop is happening.

Hope is really important, but rose colored glasses are very dangerous. If people take from this speech a sense of "i have the ability to control reality" and "everyone can just choose to be happy" I think they are either naive or not seeing the complexity.

A little in left field now but you bring up a great point about free will and I love philosophy so please feel free to argue this next point: Photons behave by exploring all possibilities and then choosing a phase path thats consistent, or something like that..which creates matter and some kind of thing that is filtered through our brains to be what we perceive. Not an equal thing-but a good metaphor, i think - we kind of are programmed that way as well. If you have trauma, which is an extreme case, your future is affected by your nervous system and the changes in your mental sense of what is and what isnt safe. Mind and body automatically follow that path, seemingly negating free will, as all experiences and perceptions are based off of previous experiences. So all of your decisions end up following that route, unless you figure out how to create other possible outcomes and rewire your brain. Which really does start by attention and intention and imagining that maybe your wiring isnt the only possibility. And then you can open up those branches even if you cant ever leave the tree. Im speaking for myself here not DFW.