Anticipation of the future takes up a lot of our time.
We anticipate good and bad events, good and bad fortune, good and bad life-situations. In its healthier avatar, this process of anticipation is demanded by life herself. We need to predict life-pathways and strategize. So we anticipate.
But don’t we overdo it often. So much that people end up spending a lifetime in some kind of anticipation. They know something’s missing in their lives but cannot at times link it to their habit of anticipation.
Why is this particular style of anticipation unhealthy and fruitless? It is because this form of anticipation takes a faulty course: A person’s life becomes marked by continuously shifting goalposts. The natural moments of happiness that otherwise could be enjoyed are replaced by a vague anticipation of a ‘better future’.
There occurs a postponement of everyday delight indefinitely- till the anticipated arrival of brighter ‘someday’. A ‘someday’ which often never gets a static date and thus continues to shift forward.
Anticipation is good to strategize. But overdoing it wastes the invaluable opportunities of enjoying Happiness. Beauty lies in the ‘moments’ passed in anticipation, not when a ‘lifetime’ is passed in anticipation. The art lies in the anticipation of life and not in a life of anticipation.
