People are always dreaming about the future. It’s sort of sweet, the way they do it – like kids waiting for their teeth to fall out so the tooth fairy can show up and leave a coin under the pillow. Except now they’re waiting for a better job, or a cleaner apartment, or some faceless person who’ll finally understand them. Maybe next year, they think. Maybe in five. Maybe after I get that one thing I keep telling myself I need.
It’s not entirely their fault. The mind does this thing by bending toward the future like a sunflower to light. Psychologists have a name for it – prospection. Fancy word, but all it means is you spend a lot of time imagining how good things could be, instead of noticing how they are. You sit in a coffee shop, lukewarm cappuccino sweating on the table, thinking about the house you’ll own one day or the novel you’ll finish, or the person you’ll become, and meanwhile, your actual life just sits there beside you, picking its nails and waiting to be noticed.
There’s research behind it, if that helps. Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist who’s supposed to know what he’s talking about, says we’re lousy at predicting what’ll make us happy. We always think we’ll be happier once this-or-that happens. He wrote a whole book about it – Stumbling on Happiness—which is sort of a nice way of saying we don’t know a thing about what we want. It’s comforting, in a sick kind of way.
Hedonic treadmill
And even when we do get what we want, it never sticks the way we thought it would. The promotion feels good for a minute and then you’re staying late at the office, googling “mild heart attack symptoms.” Psychologists call this the hedonic treadmill – you run and run, but you don’t get anywhere. You just keep sweating in fancier shoes. It sounds like something you’d find in a gym with bad lighting and motivational quotes peeling off the walls. But it’s not. It’s worse. It’s the idea that no matter what happens – good or bad – you end up feeling more or less the same as you always did. Happy, sad, medium. You buy the car, you get the girl, you win the award, and sure, you smile for a while. You’re obnoxiously cheerful for like a week. But then the car needs new brakes, the girl starts calling less, and the award gathers dust on a shelf next to expired allergy pills.
And down you go. Right back to your regular, garden-variety emotional setting. The scenery changes, but you don’t. But it’s just human. We adapt fast – to the good and the bad. That’s how we survive.
But people still hope. It’s like a national pastime and maybe that’s fine. Hope gives people a reason to get up, shower (or at least rinse), and pretend they’re not as scared as they are. It lets them believe that somewhere out there, some version of themselves is finally getting it right. And who’s going to take that away from them?
Still, there’s a danger in it. You can lose your whole life that way. Always looking forward, never really in anything. You spend your twenties wanting to be thirty, and your thirties wishing you’d appreciated your twenties. And on and on it goes, like some cosmic joke, nobody’s brave enough to laugh at.
Some people learn the trick, though. They learn to lemonade the hell out of their lemons. They look around and decide, “Well, this isn’t what I ordered, but it’s warm and kind of weird and maybe that’s enough.” They start noticing things – like how their dog sighs before it sleeps, or how the morning light makes the dust look like it’s dancing. Lemonading is slightly different from seeing the glass half full. At its core, lemonading is about having a good attitude.
You could call it mindfulness if you want to sound like you own a yoga mat. But really, it’s just being where your feet are. It’s telling the future to take a number. Because the present – this weird, imperfect little moment you’re in – is the only thing that’s actually happening. Everything else is just rehearsal.
So dream, sure. Pack your future with beach houses and soulmates and better versions of yourself. But don’t wait to be happy. That’s the trap. That’s how you miss your own life.
The tea’s getting cold. Drink it.