Being Happy with What You've Got

About six months ago a friend told me about a disappointment: he had been expecting his yearly raise to be of a certain amount, and, based on that expectation he'd made reservations for a big beautiful trip to the Carribean. But the raise wasn't as much as he'd expected and he had to cancel the trip.

So you can see this problem in two ways: on the one hand, my friend didn't get the raise that he was hoping for, and so the problem is that he doesn't have enough. But on the other hand you can see the problem as being that he was planning ahead for the next raise before he even knew what it would be. The problem, in other words, is not that he didn't have enough, but that he wanted too much.

Probably this is a subtle distinction, but it's really the key to happiness. We'll never have everything, but we can learn to be happy with what we've got.