Mirror, mirror

Positive thinking and self-affirmations are good strategies at times, but striving for happiness is a doomed enterprise.

- Marc Wilson

I have a picture of Cave Johnson on my wall, engraved with one of his better-known quotes: “Science is not about why, but why not?” I can even turn on the movement sensor in the frame and it will shout random Cave Johnson affirmations at passers-by in a voice that sounds a lot like that of JK Simmons. One of these is the famous “If life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade …” speech, which is a doozy.

Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of Cave Johnson – he’s a fictional character from a well-known computer game, Portal 2. There are lots of memes of Johnson’s sayings, but the satirical lemons speech is the most popular – an anti-stoic call to stand up when bad stuff happens, and many people find it bizarrely motivating.

Advice columnists might think of “lemons” as a kind of affirmation – a bit like Bruce Willis’ cameo on Friends where he stands in front of a mirror telling himself that he is “a neat guy”.