The Waiting for What Never Comes

As a child, I would count from one hundred down to one. Again and again, I'd think: what if something extraordinary happens when I reach one?

Nothing extraordinary ever happened when I reached one.

Yet it pleased me, even as it left me unsettled somehow. I'd wonder: should I count again? And the next time—would it be different? Or the time after that...?

This is what it feels like when expectation goes unfulfilled. Even when something good comes instead of what we waited for, there's a strange dissatisfaction to it. We find ourselves thinking: was this goodness really good?

Growing older doesn't much alter this cast of mind. When life delivers something fortunate—when it proves our every anxiety groundless—we still, after a time, begin to gasp and flounder.

People cannot easily bear good fortune.