"Enjoying the ride" doesn't mean not trying not trying to improve it. And you can be upset at a situation and then get to fixing it with a positive mindset.

Since you bring up starving, I'll give you my starving story. BMI was under 18 and trending south. I got kind of abandoned for a bit in high school. My daily food was one potato in the morning (baked, plain), the high school free lunch, and, as long as I stole an extra hamburger that I could sell (which was not every day, depending on rotation), I'd have enough money to get a can of soup for the evening. This would be warmed on a wood burning stove that I also used to keep my room warm. The rest of the house was, literally, ice cold due to a missing wall (which is non-ideal in the mountains and also encourages wildlife to steal your meager food stores). What meager food I could stash away got stolen by raccoons once - there was a missing wall on my house at the time and the mountain wildlife could come on in if they could navigate a tarp.

I could have been upset with my dad for leaving me in that situation. I could be upset with other extended (and close by) family who did not help. I could be upset with neighbors who didn't help. I could be upset when I saw people wasting food (and, yeah, that stung... a lot). I could be upset that my stomach being in pain or some stints with nausea was a normal feeling. I could be upset by a thousand things in my situation (and these are but the surface of my hardships). I could have decided that my happiness was based on all that.

However, I tried to enjoy "roughing it." I took the time to enjoy searching for wood to heat my wood burning stove to heat my cold room and my can of soup that I got only because I stole and sold other food earlier. Would I prefer that to where I am today? Hell the no. I looked around and knew I did not like where my life was directed and the current state of it. So I focused on what I could do. I could get my school work completed. I could talk to friends before school if I got there early enough. Maybe a day was a no-hamberger-available-to-steal-and-sell day; I would enjoy that I got to sneak a slice of pizza from another classroom's party or I could get the left overs from a friend before they tossed something. I think I was a generally happy person despite all of my hardships (and these are but the surface of my hardships).

So I've been starving with every right to be upset. I chose to, instead, focus on things I could do something about. Slowly I improved my situation. I found food. I got good grades. I got scholarships. I starved some more. I worked crazy hours. I failed. And I failed some more. By my late 20s, I had started to figure things out and I, for the first time, could buy a pizza on the way home and not think about the financial hardship. I could avoid being hungry. Tack on another decade and I am wildly successful. However, I've also had to deal with depression, anxiety, insecurity, and feeling like not belonging along the way.

Edit: post question I meant to ask:

> self-deception/lying-to-oneself

I'm curious on what you mean here - why is that significant? This sounds like saying you shouldn't read fiction because it isn't real. When you pump yourself up (for a lift, a sports game, to ask out someone attractive), you are practicing forms of self-deception. Also, you are not saying, "this is great, life sucks." You are saying, "life sucks, but there are great things." Reality doesn't change, but the way you interpret it can.