Last night, I watched Road House with a close friend. I had few expectations, but when Amazon Prime showed that it was its #1 most watched show, I couldn’t help but feel excited. We dimmed the lights, prepared food and drinks and pressed play.

Excitement soon gave way to bewilderment, then to utter confusion. From the outset the movie was not good. The female casts made no sense, the plot was nowhere to be found, and so many lines were plain awful. The only thing keeping the show afloat past 30 minutes was Jake Gyllenhaal’s acting and physique.

And that’s when I realised. Why was I taking this so seriously?

Here I was, sitting in a quiet apartment, enjoying a show with a friend undisturbed. It didn’t matter if Road House was utter trash. This moment in itself was something to be treasured, not scoured by bad accents and nonsensical dialogue.

I began watching the show as a comedy instead of an action/thriller. And it was so much more enjoyable. We cracked jokes at terrible lines, hooted at pointless scenes and cheered for the fight sequences later on. When it finished, my ribs and jaw were sore from laughter. What started out as a complete disappointment turned out to be a lot of fun.

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality,” Seneca once wrote. Had I continued in my critical pessimism, I would have hated Road House. But with a quick mindset shift, the evening became a memorable one. Part of the road to happiness, I think, lies in knowing when to relax and view surprising situations as a comedy. You never know how much enjoyment could result.