“Life is a long preparation for something that never happens” – WB Yeats.

Every strength has its shadow side. The creative person has heightened sensitivity and imagination but more anxiety and self-doubt. The friendly cooperater builds harmony but finds it hard to say no and face conflict. The process-oriented person brings order and reliability but struggles with spontaneity or originality.

The ability to delay gratification – one of the strongest predictors of success – casts a large shadow, a cognitive bias called the Arrival Fallacy.

The Arrival Fallacy is the feeling that our “real life” is somewhere in the future. We think that by continually striving to build the future we envision, we’ll eventually arrive there and finally be happy and content – once we have the promotion, the nice car, the perfect partner, the big house, the trophies, the money in the bank, the happy family, the successful business, the comfortable retirement, and – you can see where this going. You will arrive safely in your grave, without ever experiencing the sustained happiness you expected.

They say alcohol is borrowing happiness from tomorrow. At least with alcohol you can undeniably experience that happiness in the moment. The Arrival Fallacy is borrowing happiness from today, except it never pays back what you expect.

Time-traveling minds

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans” – John Lennon (attributed to him anyway).

Our minds are time travellers. Some people, by nature, are more present-focused. Others dwell more on the past. And some (like “type-A personalities”) are more future-focused. There’s nothing inherently wrong with each of these inclinations. Memories of the past can be a source of great pleasure and meaning. Thinking about and planning a better future can help us get through tough times in our lives but it can also be hugely enjoyable and meaningful. But I’m convinced that everyone would benefit from nudging themselves closer and more often to the present.

Joy’s soul

“Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.” – Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida.

Neuroscientists have shown there are disconnects between networks of neurons in the brain for craving something and for experiencing that thing. (For example, maybe you were excited to get a new smartphone; compare that with how you felt about it a few weeks later.) These disconnects often drive us towards goals that don’t bring us the pleasures we expected.

It’s not so much achieving goals that makes us happy (that happiness is real but usually fleeting); it’s the sense of making progress towards our goals. But this has its own shadow side (of course it does).

Achieving our goals requires us to go out into the world and solve problems. This problem-solving mode bleeds into moments when we don’t need it, colouring our subjective experience of the present with a mild, gnawing sense of incompleteness, a sense that your experience needs to be different in some way.

As you’re reading these words, part of your mind may be elsewhere, thinking of some problem or goal or outcome you want. Maybe your eyes are flitting through this article, picking out words here and there, hunting for something you can use.

There are ways to be more present and to not hold your life hostage to an imagined future that will never arrive.

Escaping the illusion

“Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.” – Chuang-Tzu

A good life is about – get ready for the cliché – the journey. That is, enjoying the passage of time as you take action towards your goals, rather than slogging through life to arrive at a destination you think will make you much happier. This is about the skill of attention – the skill the modern world is designed to decimate.

One part-antidote to the Arrival Fallacy is old-fashioned mindfulness: training your brain, through regular reminders and practice, to fully experience the second-by-second experience of your life, because that’s all there ever is.

The future will never arrive. It will just be a version of you, experienced through your eyeballs but with different things in front of you. Your world is and always will be experienced in the first-person. Even thinking about the past and crafting a meaningful story about your life is something we do in the present. 

Imagine the to-list was done forever, the millions were in the bank, the big house was yours and you had all the material things you ever wanted. What then? And would you give it all up to be young again?

The skill of attention

Attention is a skill, like any other. You can learn what works and what doesn’t, and practice until it becomes easier. When you’re lost in thought, recognise it, and train your mind to come back to the present. (A friend described it as popping thought bubbles with a pin and seeing reality afresh again).

Put the phone down and look around every now and then. Whatever task you’re engaged in, think about what you’re doing, not what you plan to do or what you did in the past.

Resist multitasking. You will feel agitated and distracted – pushing through that uncomfortable feeling is like a bench-press for your brain; it strengthens your mind’s ability to stay focused.

Or just start really small: Give yourself the challenge of spending 5 minutes a day with your attention completely focused on the present. No tasks, no scrolling, no planning.

You’re already here

Most of us have fallen into the trap of the Arrival Fallacy at one time or another. We use today as a means to an end, treating the present moment as a prologue, something to be gotten out of the way before the main story starts. We’re in pursuit of something better and we make the classic mistake of letting too much of the present moment slip away.

Some sharp reminders can bring this into focus. If you have kids, you will pick them up one last time without knowing it. You will speak to a friend for the last time. Someone you love might meet their end in the most pointless, stupid, meaningless way. Everything you do, including reading these words, is the last time this moment in time will ever exist.

This needs constant reminding, because a strange veil of sedation numbs our senses to the astonishing reality that there is anything at all.

The final word has to go to the philosopher Alan Watts, who clearly had the gift of the gab:

“No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.

Look at the people who live to retire; to put those savings away. And then when they’re 65 they don’t have any energy left. They’re more or less impotent. And they go and rot in some old people’s senior citizens community. Because we simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line.

Because we thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at that end, and the thing was to get to that thing at that end. Success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”

The last post in this series is about the most common regrets of older people in the twilight of their lives. Read about it here.