Nothing is so depressing as cheerfullness in the wrong place.

I always feel that the right way to cope with trouble is to look at it, decide what is the worst you can expect, and then say "I can cope with that" and get on with things. People who say "I'm sure it's all going to be fine" just bring me down.

It's rather the same attitude as singing the blues as a way of gettig over them. And it's related to the approach taken by someone trying to fix an engine - they look for what is wrong, and concentrate on that. You wouldn't want your car fixed by someone whose whole focus was on picking out the things that hadn't gone wrong. (I use that analogy because I've just been reading the Ladies No 1 Detective Agency books, including the estimable car mechanic Mr. JLB Maketoni - I recommend these to cheer anyone up.)

People seem to like arguing about whether everything has got better or worse, and that's missing the point - some things are better, some are worse, and the balance is going to be different for all of us, depending on what happens on our lives, and what matters most to us.

As for Frodo and the Ring Quest sorting out everything, that's to misunderstand Tolkien. He wasn't presenting the end of Sauron as the final defeat of evil, it was a temporary victory in a struggle which never ends. An episode in "a long defeat", even.   

Jerry's song there seems to hit the right note. I'd like to see the rest.