The Joy is Not in the Reward, It's in the Journey

Ever thought about racking up lots and lots of money? Where you can buy anything you want, go anywhere you want to go, spend time with the most amazing people in the world? Not a bad thought right? Most of us would be entranced by this idea. However people who actually get to do these things would probably laugh at us for such a simple minded idea of joy. Better yet, people who go through the process of earning lots of money and have now reached a point of their life where they can do all those things would tell you your dreams aren't all it's cracked up to be. Why is that?

Well because as humans we have the tendency to synthesize joy based on our imagination. We developed the habit to put joy in a specific future we want to happen when it truly never happens. Think of the time when you are so hungry all you can think about is food. Then you manage to obtain your favorite food. Think of that first bite, it was indescribable right? But then you take your second bite, it is still good, but not a great as the first. Then you bite again and again, with each bite loosing the pleasure. Till eventually you start to resent your favorite food. This is the nature of synthesized joy, it is never truly satisfied.

Truly happy people do not put their happiness in a vague future that they can't control. They obtain happiness in the current present they are living in. They enjoy the process of reaching their goals not in attaining it. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO facebook, worked on facebook because he was very happy with the popularity it is giving him. He loved to program and he figured out how he can use his programming abilities to gain popularity in school for a chance to maybe get girls. He was very happy just amassing popularity at the same time being able to code at the same time without getting paid. He never idealized facebook to be a multi-billion dollar company. He was just enjoying the what he was doing and the billions are just an accidental result of it.

We have to remember that the future doesn't exist yet. Therefore it can mold into any shape or form that is impossible for us to determined exactly beforehand. So it doesn't make sense to put something so important such as our happiness in an unpredictable future. What is best for us is to put our happiness where things truly exist and things are actually real--the present.