His peculiar confidence
The best related-stories box I've read all year came on the Atlantic's happiness story, with every story worth reading. Among them was one I'd read a couple years ago and since forgotten, about Lincoln's likely clinical depression but more importantly how he dealt with sadness.
With Lincoln sadness did not just coexist with strength — these qualities ran together. Just as death supports new life in a healthy ecosystem, Lincoln's self-negation fueled his peculiar confidence. His despair lay under a distinct hope; his overwhelming melancholy fed into a supple creative power, which allowed him not merely to see the truth of his circumstances but to express it in a stirring, meaningful way. The events in New York help illustrate the basic progression: Wariness and doubt led Lincoln into a kind of personal crisis, from which he turned to work. Afterward he largely turned aside acclaim to return to wariness and doubt, and the cycle began again.
