To speak of the promise of happiness is to invoke the basic situation of the dream of living. Perhaps our account of ourselves really begins when we have accepted this promise, when the sense of self has become sufficiently matured or humanised that we can take it on; it seems to be a choice we inevitably make, we grasp the prospect of happiness before we are able to deliberate. It means that on a mostly latent level we project our situation in time and in world-space. If mind's role is to predict, in this case it is doing so detached from reality, creating scenarios based on its internal feedback. The only certain prediction is death, the end of all predictions, the convergence of all limitations. There is an opposition of life and death, but not as mythical instincts, rather as ways of embodying time. To follow the trace of a certain sweetness, to believe there is such a trace, is to have something to follow. You want to see yourself in a good situation, to have hope, optimism, but you fear that it is unreal, based on thin premises, on made up grounds, that the smiling face is a mask for horror. This is where you strategise, you might take up an outwardly pessimistic position so as to forestall the pessimistic shadow of your optimism. You can face the horror and deflect it into humour, develop your project in parallel with those of others, or in opposition to them, pivoting on them. There are so many possibilities and of such sophistication that you can become fascinated by their intricacies, sheltering your own hold on the promise by never exposing it.
"And nobody knows, so still it flows
That any brook is there;
And yet your little draught of life
Is daily drunken there." - E. Dickinson