emotions: positive v negative

I found this Atlantic article on happiness so interesting.... (thankfully the conclusions are mostly not easy pat answers... ie: we're complicated!!) but here's one part of it:

“...positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.”

It makes me think of two other thoughts:

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable." CS Lewis

And from Foy Vance’s Two Shades of Hope...
“Now hope deals the hardest blows
Yet I cannot help myself but hope”

For some reason I’m more hopeful these days... I think it’s because I’m just about to enter a new chapter of life, which fits with what the article says about positive emotions being more ‘future-oriented’... but it does sometimes seem wonderful and terrifying in equal proportions.