"arrival fallacy"

The belief, rather dubious, in feeling 'happy' at some future destination that we need to arrive at and come to. It is the postponement of pleasure to some distant point that is yet to come in terms of real time, as opposed to experiencing it at the present and in the here and now. We all believe that we would arrive at a place in a time line where everything will be solved and cleared up, where all our goals will be met, where we will be truly happy and content in a manner we can never be in the now for life takes over and problems stay consistently part of the scene.

The truth is quite different. There is no specific destination in the future towards which we are travelling to, which is completely free of problems and issues of a daily life, we can imagine a utopian future, but it is only a dream, an imaginary place not a real space. Having goals is something different, we all need those motivators to work and move towards through our lives, goals are achieved, or redefined, or not met, but they do remain an important ingredient of our lives.

I am not talking of goals here, I am talking of the feeling we all have while living our lives and doing different things that these very actions bring us stress and perhaps pain at the time of doing them, but in the future all such actions will cumulatively make us very happy, hence I have a party for friends and work my ass off for days, stressing and worrying eventually thinking and believing that the party would ultimately make me happy at some future time.

The arrival fallacy dupes us into believing that there will come a point in the future where somehow all problems and issues will come to a full stop, and life would then be idyllic. This belief makes us perpetually live in a state of waiting, of not living in the now and this moment.