The Happiness Hedge

“The fundamental delusion - there is something out there that will make me happy and fulfilled forever.”

Naval Ravikant

I have giant goals, daring dreams and fantastical fantasies that, if realized, I believe will make me happier. But a rather unsettling thought is getting what I want, and it not making me as happy as I anticipated. 

Hence what I call the happiness hedge.

There are the obvious barriers to happiness: drug addiction, poor diet, lack of exercise and other evils. That’s not what I’m talking about. 

Granted the great gift of robust physical health, there is still the most fundamental delusion of the mind: once you get that thing, once you go to the new place, once you do this, then you will be happy. Then everything will be all set, and at last you will live blissed-out ever after.

This is fiction, a false fairy tale.

The fulfillment of desire leads to the creation of new desire. This is one of the Buddha’s Noble Truths. When you overcome some form of suffering, it is only replaced by new, relative suffering. “What is happiness?” asked the haunted face of Don Draper in the show Mad Men, “it is the moment before you need more happiness.”

So it goes.  

By all means stay invested in the idea that getting what you want will make you happier. I sure am!

But hedge this investment, too.

Hedge it by dwelling deeply in the present moment. Hedge it by letting yourself be joyous, here, now. Hedge it by guarding against the fundamental delusion, the dangerous Deferred Happiness Syndrome.¹

Tempus Fugit.² Moments pass, and time never passes back the moments. The wisest possible thing you can do, then, is just enjoy.

Zaphod Bebblebrox, Trillian, and Marvin flying through space in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)

1. “Deferred Happiness Syndrome: The common feeling that your life has not begun, that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idyllic future. This idyll is a mirage that’ll fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you rushed through was in fact the one to your death.”

— Gurwinder Bhogal, 40 Mind Expanding Concepts

2. “Time flies.” (Latin)